XI.

My eyes are full of tears, My heart is full of pain, To wake, as now, again, And walk, as in my youth, the wilderness of Years! No more! no more! the autumn winds are loud In stormy passes, howling to the Night: Behind a cloud the moon doth veil her light, And the rain pours from out the horned cloud. And hark! the solemn and mysterious bell, Swinging its brazen echoes o'er the wave: Not mortal hands, but spirits ring the knell, And toll the parting ghost of Midnight to its grave.

TO A BEREAVED MOTHER.

BY HERMANN.

Its smile and happy laugh are lost to thee, Earth must his mother and his pillow be.

W. G. CLARK.

Mother, now thy task is done, Now thy vigil ended; With the coming of the sun, Grief and joy are blended.

Grief that thus thy flower of love From its stem is riven; Joy that will bloom above, Midst the bowers of Heaven.

Gone, as oft expires the light Of thy nightly taper: Gone, as 'fore the sunshine bright, Early morning's vapor.

Kiss its lips so mute and cold, Cold as chiselled marble, They will now to harp of gold Glad Hosannas warble.

At the last they sweetly smiled, Told it not for gladness; Would'st thou now recall thy child To a world of sadness?

It is hard to gather up, Ties so rudely riven; But thou'lt find this bitter cup For thy weal was given.

Kiss again its hands so white, Kiss its marble forehead; Soon the grave will hide from sight, That thou only borrowed.

Thou will meet thy child again, Where no death or sorrow Bring their sad to-day of pain, And their dread to-morrow.

FOOTNOTES:

[L] This poem, in an unfinished form, was published some months ago in _Sartain's Magazine_. It has since been re-written for the _International_, and is now much more than before deserving of the applause with which it was received.

THE AMBITIOUS BROOKLET.

BY A. OAKEY HALL.

## CHAPTER I.

_How the Brooklet was born; and lodged; and wandered off one rainy day._

There was once a Brooklet born of a modest spring that circled through a smiling meadow. All the hours of the Spring, and the Summer, and the Autumn, kept she her musical round; greeting the sun at his rising, together with the meadow-larks which came to dip their beaks in the sparkling water-drops; and singing to the moon and stars all night, as she bore their features within her bosom, in grateful remembrance of their beauty. The laborer in the field hard by often came to visit her, and wet his honest, toil-browned brow with her cooling drops; and often, too, the laborer's daughter came at sunset time to sit by a mossy stone, with so lovely a face that the Brooklet, as she mirrored the features of the beautiful visitor, leaped about the pebbles with ripplings of admiration.

And so this Brooklet lived on, only ceasing her merry flow and circling journey when the bushes by her side became white with snow, and when the rabbits from the brushwood fence at her head came out to stand upon the slippery casing that the Brooklet often saw spreading over her, and shutting out the warm sunshine by day, and at nightfall blurring the radiance of moon and stars.

One stormy spring day the Brooklet seemed to rise higher among the twigs of the alder-bushes than ever before; the rain came down faster and heavier, and beat into her bosom, until her tiny waves were rough and sore with pain, and she was fain to nestle closer to the sedgy grass that now bent lowly to the pebbles at the roots. Growing higher every minute was the Brooklet; and frightened somewhat, and longing for the sunlight, or the laborer, and for the lovely daughter's face to cheer her up, she looked off over a track of country wider and greener than she had ever seen before. And so the Brooklet, all frightened as she was, said to herself, "I'll run along a bit into this country spot, so wide and green, and maybe I shall find the sunlight and the lovely face."

Faster came the rain; and so the Brooklet, leaping wildly over a rock whose top until then her eyes had never seen, went flowing on upon this country spot, so wide and green. The new sights coming in view at every bound quite made the Brooklet forget her terrors from the beating rain; she was pained no longer by the heavy drops, but soothed herself among the velvet grass; and turned between little flowers scarcely above the ground, and which, as she passed them, seemed to be as frightened by the wind and rain as herself had been before the meadow was left behind.

The Brooklet had thus run on until she saw the country spot so wide and green was well passed over, and trees and bushes, darker and thicker than she had ever known before, were close at hand. And while she thought of stopping in her way and going back, she heard not far before an echo of a sound most like unto her own; and so kept on to find it out. Clearer and louder increased the sound, as now through mouldy leaves and dark thickets, and under decayed logs and insect-burrowed moss, she kept a course, until presently, over a fallen tree, she saw a Brooklet, larger, wider, and evidently much older than herself, which, on her near approach, ran by the fallen tree's side, and said, "Good morning, sister: what is so delicate a being, as you seem to be, doing in this dark forest?"

The wanderer Brooklet became silent with wonder. She had never been addressed before, though often trying to talk with the laborer, and to the lovely face of her meadow acquaintance, without the slightest notice upon their part of the overtures.

"Good morning, sister, I say," was repeated over the fallen tree. "Where are you going at so slow a pace? Come over, and let us talk a bit."

"I cannot, for I am terribly frightened, and I've lost my way. I want to quit this dark place, and go where I can hear the lark again, and see the pretty face which used to look at mine when I was circling in yonder meadow, now, I fear, far, far behind."

"Larks and pretty faces, indeed! Why what a spooney sister, you are, to be sure. I'll show you more birds than ever you heard sing before, and prettier faces than ever you saw before."

"No, no, I must go back," replied the wanderer; "I have come too far already, and see, the rain has almost ceased."

"More's the pity for that," returned the other; "the faster it rains the faster I go, and that is what I want. I have left my family brooks a long time since, and I'm going on my travels to be somebody. I'm tired of my lonesome life among the meadows. I'm the _ambitious Brooklet_. Come over, then, and go along; we'll travel the faster in company."

"I'm not ambitious; and as you may see, I cannot come."

"You're almost to the log top now. I'll kiss you soon," triumphed the ambitious Brooklet, circling gayly round a tuft of green.

It must have been the terrible rain, or the fright of her dark journeying place, that had taken her strength away:--the wandering Brooklet felt that it must be: for now her strength of will was almost gone. Nearer the log top came in view, until with a bound she swept its polished surface, and with a dash came over upon the ambitious Brooklet.

"Good! that's the way to do it; now we shall journey gayly on," said the latter, "I have lost much time in stopping here, and there are such rare sights ahead!"

The wanderer felt the oddest sensations she had ever known, and said, "Sister--ambitious sister--how much warmer than I are you!"

"Oh, you are young, I suppose--fresh from the icy spring. But journey on more southward yet, away from these dark trees, and you'll be warmer yet; come, I say."

"I like your feel; but then I shall be lost, I know I shall; and so I'll stay behind."

"You cannot; for, ambitious as I am, I want your help. See how much faster we travel together when your strength is joined to mine; and I'm the strongest, and you can't go back."

The wandering Brooklet looked fearfully around, and saw indeed that the log she had leaped was now fast fading away, and felt that her strength became less and less as the ambitious Brooklet clung closer to her side.

Presently they came in sight of a ledge of rocks. "Oh, this is rare indeed!" said the stronger sister Brooklet, "Let us pause a bit for breath, and then for a merry leap adown the valley of pines you see before."

The Brooklets stopped, and became stronger, and leaped over the rocks; the one with an exulting bound--the other carried tremblingly along.

The leap was a long one, and a hard one; for there were craggy rocks beneath, which they had not seen. And the ambitious Brooklet cried sharply and loudly--foaming in her rage as she went between the stony points, and quite forgetting her weaker sister in her pain. The latter was sorely injured too, and cut into little foam-bits; but she kept her wits about her, looking around everywhere for a place to rest. Soon she espied one--a little bowl of marshy ground, hemmed in by rocks, into which a straggling dropping from the chasm above slowly came.

"Here will I go and rest," she said. So waiting for the ambitious Brooklet to get far out of sight, she collected all her strength for a jump into the bowl, where the drops came sparkling in. There was no need for fear of the sister on before; her she heard going over rock after rock, crying and wailing in her craggy journey. Then the tired wanderer, with a violent effort of her exhausted strength, jumped a rock and fell panting into the marshy bowl.

## CHAPTER II.

_How the Brooklet lived on in her new quarters; and how misfortune made her discontented._

The dropping of the water from the rocks above her new abode, was cold and grateful to the Brooklet in her fevered state. It made her think of the spring she came from; and so of the meadow; and the alder-bushes; and the lovely face a weary way off now she knew, and fenced away from her return by cruel jagged rocks.

Days passed by; and the sun came out all brightly. And the moon and stars were seen again; and larger and sweeter birds than she had heard before, now perched upon the trees about, warbling and chirruping from day-break to twilight. So the time passed on. The wanderer began to feel unsettled in her solitude. But there was no return by the path she came; still were the sharp rocks seen above; and still she felt a twinge of pain when thinking of her weary journey on that rainy day. Often too she thought of her ambitious sister, wondering where she was now and what she was about; and sometimes she almost fancied she would have been happier had she gone along. It was quite evident to herself that she was getting discontented.

There was one pleasure she prized much. Following in the train of the ambitious Brooklet had been a score of fishes, which, frightened by the leap upon the jagged rocks, had staid behind with the timid wanderer, until they became part of her family in the new retreat. Overlooking, and enjoying the gambols of these fish, the discontented Brooklet often amused herself. Observing how when the sun came slanting through the sides of the foliage about, they would dart out from their hiding-places in the old dead leaves at the feet of the Brooklet, and so jump up to greet the warming rays: or how, when a fly fell down from the overhanging boughs, and tried to swim away, they would jump to nab a bit of lunch, scrabbling and tugging as they went; or how, when the largest fish of all threw off his dignity, and played with them at hide and seek under the foot-deep bottom of mud, they would all shoot about her life-blood drops without regard to the angles of pain their fins would leave behind!

Thus the summer-time came on, and was passing by, when one day the Brooklet felt a shadow upon her, and looked up to see the cause--when high upon the rocks above, there stood a bright-eyed boy, with curling locks that blew about in golden beauty with the breeze. In his hand he held a little stick, which he turned over from time to time, and would take up and then lay it down, as if preparing for something wonderful. The curiosity of the Brooklet was aroused to know what he could mean, when presently she saw him sit upon the rock, and from the stick drop down upon her face a worm, which when the fishes saw they darted out to eat.

"It is a beautiful boy; and a kind boy," said the artless Brook unto herself; "and he has come to feed the little fishes with a worm. I have not seen one since I left my little meadow on that rainy day. How like the lovely face I used to see, is his which now looks down."

While thus the Brook was soliloquizing, a fish more cunning than the rest, had seized the worm within his mouth, and was swimming away to his favorite hole by an old willow stump to there complete a meal. He was just entering it, when the Brook saw him suddenly flash from her embrace, floundering and pulling as he went up, up through the air, unto the mossy bank above the rock from which fell the shadow of the boy. And now the Brook, more curious than ever, saw the face so like the laborer's daughter overspread with smiles as the tiny hands grasped the fish, and with a wrench tore out the worm from his gills, a piece of which fell on the Brook athwart the shadow of the laugher.

"What a fine one!" said the boy, and started up;--started up to slip against a smooth worn stone, and fall over the rock into the Brook, close by the willow stump; the captive fish held tightly as he went, but slipping from the falling grasp into its welcome element once more.

The Brook had never felt so hard a blow before. The rain and hail were nothing to this. It made her splash and leap and swell against the rocky bank, until she could have called with pain.

How still the boy laid on her breast! his head against the willow stump, over which there trickled a tiny purple stream smaller than the spring-drops from the rock! How richly his golden locks floated upon the Brook! but how widely strained his bright blue eyes glaring at the sky and tree-tops above, and how he gasped from his mouth; a mouth so like the one the laborer had often prest in harvest-time to the Brook, when it was yet circling in the meadow! The Brook said to herself, "I will put some of my ripples into this mouth, as I have seen the laborer do; perhaps, like him, it will make his eye sparkle, and send him away again; for he lies heavy on my breast." And so the ripples went into the opened mouth by dozens; but the blue sky and tree-tops faded from his eyes, and the lips lost their bright color, and the purple trickling on the willow stump grew thick and settled into a dark pool.

All night the dead boy lay upon the breast of the Brook; and the fishes played around him, wondering what it was; and the little insects hopped over him at early sunlight; until the purple pool dried up, and only left a stain behind.

And soon the Brook heard the hum of voices sounding over the rocks, as she listened from her solitude; and soon more shadows fell upon her face. Then looking up she saw the laborer once again; and the Brook rejoiced to think perhaps she was going back again into her pleasant meadow. He had taken up the stick the boy had used; and was looking down below upon the Brook, as the face--the lovely face, with more of the old sorrow in it--of the laborer's daughter, raised itself above his shoulder.

"My brother!--drowned and dead!--and no more to come home alive to share his sister's home."

This the Brook heard, and the fishes swam away into their holes, as piercing, sorrowful human tones mingled with the passing breeze; and they struck deeper into the willow roots as a pair of brawny arms readied out and caught the dead boy, and carried him away.

The boy was gone, but the stain was there; and still a weight remained upon the Brook. For still day after day a shadow fell upon her, and the Brook looking up beheld the lovely but mournful face of the sorrowing sister, who would sit upon the mossy bank and sigh a sob; kissing a lock of golden hair the while. And heavier grew the weight on the breast of the Brook, as scalding tears fell from the rock above upon her face.

And now the Brook again became discontented: and thought of her ambitious sister; and what might have happened had she followed after on a weary round of travels. The old meadow and the alders were out of the question now: for the winter was coming on, and the laborer and the lovely face would no more come to her side; and if they did they would sing no more, but sigh and sob, and look so sad, as now, upon the mossy rock above.

The summer weather was long over; and the leaves were showering down, and had quite hidden the clouds and blue sky, and moon and stars from the sight of the Brook. The birds had ceased to sit and warble on the trees above. The breezes ceased their music, and instead were heard the hoarse notes of the Autumn wind.

## CHAPTER III.

_How the Brooklet and the Mountain-Torrent met._

One day the leaves thickened more than ever over the Brook, and, as she peeped between, she saw the clouds were heavier and darker than usual. The wind roared louder, and the trees which grew so high above her bent down their branches until they brushed her face with their trailing. And soon the rain began to fall in torrents; and it fell and fell all day; all night too. Then the Brook rejoiced to think the leaves which she had been angry with before for choking her, protected from the pattering strokes. And soon the Brook heard a sound, like that made by her ambitious sister in the spring-time;--nearer and nearer it came; through the trees; over the rocks; tearing, splashing, dashing, and foaming at a direful rate.

"It is my ambitious sister come for me. I'm glad," said the discontented Brook.

"Glad of what?" exclaimed a roaring voice, coming over the rock, and sweeping away the leaves as if they had been a mere handful; and covering up the ugly purple stain upon the willow stump. "Ain't I a famous fellow, though? When once my blood is up, can't I go on and frighten people? Can't I mine out the earth, and sweep along big trees like boats? Can't I tumble down the rocks that dare to stop my path? Can't I drown men and boys, and all the cattle in the land? I've swallowed a dozen haystacks for my breakfast, and killed the finest mill-dam over the world this morning. I said I would as soon as winter came, when they dammed me up last spring, so many miles away! Oh, such a mass of stone and timber which they put up to fret me in my path; and what a joke to think this solid mass is scattered through the land since yesternight, and I am free once more."

"This is not my ambitious sister! no indeed," murmured the Brook.

"Why here is a little Brook," continued the voice, "a dainty, prudish, modest Brook, collected in a hole to die! Come out, my fair one! I will wed thee, as I have wedded fifty thousand of your sex in my short day! Come out; no fear; if I am the Mountain-Torrent, I'm not so great a monster as they say, especially to hurt a modest Brook."

So saying the Mountain-Torrent caught up the shrinking Brook in his powerful embrace, and away they hurried through the very heart of the forest, miles and miles below.

"This, this is life indeed," said the wedded Brook, once more a wanderer over the land, as with a thousand other Brooks they travelled on for many hours with impetuous speed, making dreadful havoc everywhere they touched. Havoc among the farmers and the villagers, who fought them inch by inch, with sticks and trees, and mounds of stone and clay, all which they licked up and swallowed, as if they had been pebbles and clumps of leaves. Havoc with the Creeks upon the route, who dared to scorn their overtures, and wed the Torrent, willingly; for spurning the placid, humble Creeks one side, they tore along their paths, and vented their fury on the bridges overhead, bringing down in general destruction, turnpikes and railroads with their pressing weight of travel.

Havoc to themselves!

For, tearing on so madly, the Mountain-Torrent, after a while, perceived his strength to fail, and his endurance to give out. But still he hurried on, though feebly, in hopes to meet more Brooks, perhaps a Lake, and so recruit himself the while. The wedded Brook was wearied too--a little; not much; at first the Mountain-Torrent had held her tightly in embrace, and carried her along with scarcely an effort; but as he wearied himself, much of the toil was thrown upon the Brook, and she was compelled to help herself. On went the Torrent, weaker every step, until at last he stopped and said:

"Oh wedded Brook! my strength is gone; here must I pause; but you go on. Perhaps before long I shall meet you again. Go slowly; over the meadows and through the villages make me a path; I'll know which way you went."

And so they parted; and so the lonely Brook meandered on, and finding out a bubbling spring, was well recruited for the journey. As she went she heard, across a little knoll, a remembered voice, and stopped. "I know you, sister Brook," cried out the voice, "go on a bit and turn towards your left, and there I'll meet you."

And towards the left the lonely Brook met her ambitious sister. She was violent no more; but sober and sedate; calm as the evening sky reflected from her face.

"I'm the 'ambitious one,'" said she, "ambitious yet, though all my strength has departed. Here on this spot was I caught and fastened up. They darkened my daylight with that smoking monster yonder, and killed my peace of mind with such a horrid din and clang, I've not a morsel of energy left. I'm a factory slave; and so are you, too, for that matter, now! Don't start; it's not my fault--the way that you were going on, you would have brought up in the Pond below, where there is yet another smoking monster; only worse than this of mine. The Pond there is a horrid fellow; poisoning with some horrid purple dye: I've seen him often when I venture near the dam and look below."

"Sister, take courage," cried the other Brook. "I'm glad I met you. I'm ambitious too, for I was lately wedded to a glorious fellow, and have been on such a glorious tour: scampering over all the land. He calls himself the 'Mountain-Torrent.' He is now behind a mile or so, and may be down upon us before long, to free us from this distressing imprisonment you speak of."

The monster smoked on; and the clanging din about maddened all the air. Huge wheels went racking and rumbling under huge brick walls. And day by day, a minute at a time, some youthful faces, pale and shadowy, looked wistfully upon the landscape below. But little knew the monster, and the clanging din, and racking wheels; and little hoped the shadowy faces of what the Brooklets plotted at the very factory door.

## CHAPTER IV.

_How the Mountain-Torrent freed the Brooks; and their fate._

The frost dropped on the Brooks, and once more blurred the moon and stars, and shut the sunlight out; and starred a thousand jewels on the mill-dam's brow; and sparkled a myriad icicles from the rumbling wheels. Far away into the country it spread a white mantle, and froze into the very heart of all the Ponds and Creeks above. And then the sun came out and shone so brightly; and then the clouds over-covered it, and the rain came pattering down as of the olden time, when first its peltings stung the meadow Brook and tempted her to roam. And higher swelled the Brooks behind their mill-dam prison, and sent more of their life-blood to refresh the poisoned Pond below.

"I am getting stronger; I am very strong to-day, sister Brook," said the ambitious one. "I think that with our efforts now united, we can push this mill-dam over and escape."

"Wait for my darling Mountain-Torrent. I hear him on his way; he follows after us. And see down yonder hill-side how he tears along; and hark! how gladly, as he sees us from his rocky bed, he roars a song of courage."

And the sister Brooks triumphed together as they saw the keepers of the smoking monster cease their clanging din, and rush for timbers to uphold the dam; and fly about with tools that were but baby toys for what was coming now.

"Bring trees; bring stones; bring every thing," cried out the Brooks, as they saw the Mountain-Torrent come rushing nearer on, sweeping away the fences, and ploughing out a path more fitting for his travels than the brookside one he kept in view.

"Welcome, my fair ones," roared he, as with heavy timbers in his maw he caught the Brooks again in strong embrace, and dashing at the smoking monster, knocked him down at once. Down came the mill-dam with an earthquake noise; the din upon the air was not of clanging tools and hammer stroke; the wheels were racking and rumbling, not beneath brick walls, but over the rocks and ruined factories below; while the pale and shadowy faces looked no longer wistfully on the landscape, but madly rushed about to spread the tale of ruin through the land.

The same old thing! The same old journey over the country. The same old havoc as they went. But the strength of a thousand Brooks seemed given to the Mountain-Torrent as, looking miles away, he saw a wide expanse of water fringed with brown and bluish lines. "It is the Ocean, fair ones," cried he; "when your feeble sights shall see it, bless my power, for at length we reach a home no art of man can invade to fetter us or bind us down. Ten millions of our species mingle there; in small harmony it is true, but better fight among ourselves than ever thus to wage a war with man. Now too approaches the time of our revenge: we'll take his life; we'll sink his ships; we'll break his boasted wealth into uncounted atoms, and scatter it."

The Brooks trembled in the strong grasp of the Mountain-Torrent to hear the vehemence with which he spoke these threatening words; but lost their fears in greater astonishment, as now they neared the ocean waste, fringed with the lines of brown and blue of which he spoke.

"Why, sister, what a noise!" cried one of the Brooks, "our own is not to be heard."

"See what a dreadful wall appears to rise and fall as we approach," answered the other. And they both clung closer to the embrace of the Torrent as he crossed the beach they reached at last, and plunged, with sticks and stones and all, upon the wall of foam and sand, which parted as the Mountain-Torrent and the Brooks joined forces with old _Ocean's_ solemn waste.

In an instant the meadow-born Brook writhed in pain, pressed on by thousands of Mountain-Torrents every way at once. She foamed and fought, and fought and foamed; under and over, up and below she plunged, but no escape; one weary work for ages yet to come!

"Revenge once more! Gather and rage! Dash to ruin ships and sailors!" growled a tone which made the writhing Brook tremble into a million foam-beads, as simultaneously a roaring Tempest clattered by with thunder and lightning in its train, while a clashing hiss, as of something rushing madly through the water, bade the Brook--the sea-slave Brook--look up.

No time for thought; for still the tone was heard, "Revenge once more! gather and rage! dash to ruin ship and sailors!" And still the tempest clattered, and still the hissing of the gallant ship's prow was heard cleaving the maddened waves. On, on! a dash; a crash; a march of maddening waves; a stunning tempest howl, and then the hiss was heard no more. But far and wide were hurried and mashed in one chaotic mass the fragments of the gallant ship.

"How wise he is; how true my Mountain-Torrent spoke," thought the frightened sea-slave Brook, as the clattering tempest, with thunder and lightning in its train, passed out of sight and hearing leagues beyond. "And now I'll rest me on this sandy beach, for this ambitious life is wearisome indeed."

And she nestled closely to a rock, and so crept into grateful rest. But as she lay, she looked beyond her sandy bed to see the lovely face of her early meadow life, when she was but a humble Brook. Pale and ghastly it lay upon a rounded stone; the hair floating out like fairy circles from the marked brow, and on the temple such a purple thickened stain as once had been upon the willow stump.

The Brook came by her side and watched her gently as she lay. Then going farther out, the Brook brought strings of sea-weed, and strung them gayly and softly round her form, and watched her thus again. "Here will I stay," thought the Brook, "and fancy I am still in the sunlight meadow before I wandered forth into ambitious company. There's nought but trouble and pain crossed my path since the rainy days of the latest spring-time. Here will I stay, and ever mourn that I listened to ambitious counselling."

LAST CASE OF THE SUPERNATURAL.

A writer in the January number of _Fraser's Magazine_, at the conclusion of a tale crammed with the intensest horrors, presents us with one instance in which the architect of such machinery was foiled.

When the recital was finished, and the company were well-nigh breathless with its skilfully cumulative terror, cried Tremenheere--

"Humph! that is rather an uncomfortable story to go to bed upon."

And presently--

"You have been lately in Spain, Melton; what news from Seville?"

"Oh," replied Melton, "you must have heard of Don Juan de Murana, of terrible memory?"

"Not we," said they.

"One gloomy evening Don Juan de Murana was returning along the quay where the Golden Tower looks down upon the Guadalquivir, so lost in thought that it was some time before he perceived that his cigar had gone out, though he was one of the most determined smokers in Spain. He looked about him, and beheld on the other side of the broad river an individual whose brilliant cigar sparkled like a star of the first magnitude at every aspiration.

"Don Juan, who, thanks to the terror which he had inspired, was accustomed to see all the world obedient to his caprices, shouted to the smoker to come across the river and give him a light.

"The smoker, without taking that trouble, stretched out his arm towards the Don, and so effectually that it traversed the river like a bridge, and presented to Don Juan a glowing cigar, which smelt most abominably of sulphur.

"If Don Juan felt something like a rising shudder, he suppressed it, coolly lighted his own cigar at that of the smoker, and went on his way, singing, _Los Toros a la puerta_."

"But who was the smoker?"

"Who could he be, but the Prince of Darkness in person, who had laid a wager with Pluto that he would frighten Don Juan De Murana, and went back to his place furious at having lost?

"If you would learn more of Don Juan de Murana, how he went to his own funeral, and died at last in the odor of sanctity, read that most spirited series of letters, _De Paris a Cadix_, wherein Alexander Dumas has surpassed himself. And now, Good night!"

A STORY WITHOUT A NAME[M]

Written For The International Monthly Magazine

BY G. P. R. JAMES, ESQ.

_Continued from Page 348._

## CHAPTER XIV.

Occasionally in the life of man, as in the life of the world--History--or in the course of a stream towards the sea, come quiet lapses, sunny and calm, reflecting nothing but the still motionless objects around, or the blue sky and moving clouds above. Often too we find that this tranquil expanse of silent water follows quickly after some more rapid movement, comes close upon some spot where a dashing rapid has diversified the scene, or a cataract, in roar and confusion and sparkling terror, has broken the course of the stream.

Such a still pause, silent of action--if I may use the term--followed the events which I have related in the last chapter, extending over a period of nearly six months. Nothing happened worthy of any minute detail. Peace and tranquillity dwelt in the various households which I have noticed in the course of this story, enlivened in that of Sir Philip Hastings by the gay spirit of Emily Hastings, although somewhat shadowed by the sterner character of her father; and in the household of Mrs. Hazleton brightened by the light of hope, and the fair prospect of success in all her schemes which for a certain time continued to open before her.

Mr. Marlow only spent two days at her house, and then went away to London, but whatever effect her beauty might have produced upon him, his society, brief as it was, served but to confirm her feelings towards him, and before he left her, she had made up her mind fully and entirely, with her characteristic vigor and strength of resolution, that her marriage with Mr. Marlow was an event which must and should be. There was under this conviction, but not the less strong, not the less energetic, not the less vehement, for being concealed even from herself--a resolution that no sacrifice, no fear, no hesitation at any course, should stand in the way of her purpose. She did not anticipate many difficulties certainly; for Mr. Marlow clearly admired her; but the resolution was, that if difficulties should arise, she would overcome them at all cost. Hers was one of those characters of which the world makes its tragedies, having within itself passions too strong and deep to be frequently excited--as the more profound waters which rise into mountains when once in motion require a hurricane to still them--together with that energetic will, that fixed unbending determination, which like the outburst of a torrent from the hills, sweeps away all before it. But let it be ever remembered that her energies were exerted upon herself as well as upon others, not in checking passion, not in limiting desire, but in guarding scrupulously every external appearance, guiding every thought and act with careful art towards its destined object. Mrs. Hazleton suffered Mr. Marlow to be in London more than a month before she followed to conclude the mere matters of business between them. It cost her a great struggle with herself, but in that struggle she was successful, and when at length she went, she had several interviews with him. Circumstances--that great enemy of schemes, was against her. Sometimes lawyers were present at their interviews, sometimes impertinent friends; but Mrs. Hazleton did not much care: she trusted to the time he was speedily about to pass in the country, for the full effect, and in the meantime took care that nothing but the golden side of the shield should be presented to her knight.

The continent was at that time open to Englishmen for a short period, and Mr. Marlow expressed his determination of going to the Court of Versailles for a month or six weeks before he came down to take possession of Hartwell place, everything now having been settled between them in regard to business.

Mrs. Hazleton did not like his determination, yet she did not much fear the result; for Mr. Marlow was preeminently English, and never likely to weal a French woman. Still she resolved that he should see her under another aspect before he went. She was a great favorite of the Court of those days; her station, her wealth, her beauty, and her grace rendered her a brightness and an ornament wherever she came. She was invited to one of the more private though not less splendid assemblies at the Palace, and she contrived that Mr. Marlow should be invited also, though neither by nature or habit a courtier. She obtained the invitation for him skilfully, saying to the Royal Personage of whom she asked it, that as he won a lawsuit against her, she wished to show him that she bore no malice. He went, and found her the brightest in the brilliant scene; the great and the proud, the handsome and the gay, all bending down and worshipping, all striving for a smile, and obtaining it but scantily. She smiled upon _him_, however, not sufficiently to attract remark from others, but quite sufficiently to mark a strong distinction for his own eyes, if he had chosen to use them. He went away to France, and Mrs. Hazleton returned to the country; the winter passed with her in arranging his house for him; and, in so doing, she often had to write to him. His replies were always prompt, kind, and grateful; and at length came the spring, and the pleasant tidings that he was on his way back to his beloved England.

Alas for human expectation! Alas for the gay day-dream of youth--maturity--middle age--old age--for they have all their daydreams! Every passion which besets man from the cradle to the grave has its own visionary expectations. Each creature, each animal, from the tiger to the beetle, has its besetting insect, which preys upon it, gnaws it, irritates it, and so have all the ages of the soul and of the heart. Alas for human speculation of all kinds! Alas for every hope and aspiration! for those that are pure and high, but, growing out of earth, bear within themselves the bitter seeds of disappointment; and those that are dark or low produce the germ of the most poisonous hybrid, where disappointment is united with remorse.

Happy is the man that expecteth nothing, for verily he shall not be disappointed! It is a quaint old saying; and could philosophy ever stem the course of God's will, it would be one which, well followed, might secure to man some greater portion of mortal peace than he possesses. But to aspire was the ordinance of God; and, viewed rightly, the withering of the flowers upon each footstep we have taken upwards, is no discouragement; for if we shape our path aright, there is a wreath of bright blossoms crowning each craggy peak before us, as we ascend to snatch the garland of immortal glory, placed just beyond the last awful leap of death.

Mrs. Hazleton's aspirations, however, were all earthly. She thought of little beyond this life. She had never been taught so to think. There are some who are led astray from the path of noble daring, to others as difficult and more intricate, by some loud shout of passion on the right or on the left--and seek in vain to return; some who, misled by an apparent similarity in the course of two paths, although the finger post says, "Thus shalt thou go!" think that the way so plainly beaten, and so seemingly easy, must surely lead them to the same point. Others again never learn to read the right path from the wrong (and she was one), while others shut their eyes to all direction, fix their gaze upon the summit, and strain up, now amidst flowers and now amidst thorns, till they are cast back from the face of some steep precipice, to perish in the descent or at the foot.

Mrs. Hazleton's aspirations were all earthly; and that was the secret of her only want in beauty. That divine form, that resplendent face, beamed with every earthly grace: sparkled forth mind and intellect in every glance, but they were wanting in soul, in spirit, and in heart. Life was there, but the life of life, the intense flame of immortal, over-earthly intelligence, was wanting. She might be the grandest animal that ever was seen, the most bright and capable intellect that ever dealt with mortal things; but the fine golden chain which leads on the electric fire from intellectual eminence to spiritual preeminence, from mind to soul, from earth to heaven, was wanting, or had been broken. Her loveliness none could doubt, her charm of manner none could deny, her intellectual superiority all admitted, her womanly softness added a grace beyond them all; but there was one grace wanting--the grace of a high, holy soul, which, in those who have it, be they fair, be they ugly, pours forth as an emanation from every look and every action, and surrounds them with a cloud of radiance, faintly imaged by the artist's glory round a saint.

Alas for human aspirations! Alas for the expectations of this fair frail creature! How eagerly she thought of Mr. Marlow's return! how she had anticipated their meeting again! How she had calculated upon all that would be said and done during the next few weeks! The first news she received was that he had arrived, and with a few servants had taken possession of his new dwelling. She remained all day in her own house; she ordered no carriage; she took no walk: she tried to read; she played upon various instruments of music; she thought each instant he would come, at least for a few minutes, to thank her for all the care she had bestowed to make his habitation comfortable. The sun gilded the west; the melancholy moon rose up in solemn splendor; the hours passed by, and he came not.

The next morning, she heard that he had ridden over to the house of Sir Philip Hastings, and indignation warred with love in her bosom. She thought he must certainly come that day, and she resolved angrily to upbraid him for his want of courtesy. Luckily, however, for her, he did not come that day; and a sort of melancholy took possession of her. Luckily, I say; for when passion takes hold of a scheme it is generally sure to shake it to pieces, and that melancholy loosens the grasp of passion for a time. The next day he did come, and with an air so easy and unconscious of offence as almost to provoke her into vehemence again. He knew not what she felt--he had no idea of how he had been looked for. He was as ignorant that she had ever thought of him as a husband, as she was that he had ever compared her in his mind to his own mother.

He talked quietly, indifferently, of his having been over to the house of Sir Philip Hastings, adding merely--not as an excuse, but as a simple fact--that he had been unable to call there as he had promised before leaving the country. He dilated upon the kind reception he had met with from Lady Hastings, for Sir Philip was absent upon business; and he went on to dwell rather largely upon the exceeding beauty and great grace of Emily Hastings.

Oh how Mrs. Hazleton hated her! It requires but a few drops of poison to envenom a whole well.

He did worse: he proceeded to descant upon her character--upon the blended brightness and deep thought--upon the high-souled emotions and child-like sparkle of her disposition--upon the simplicity and complexity, upon the many-sided splendor of her character, which, like the cut diamond, reflected each ray of light in a thousand varied and dazzling hues. Oh how Mrs. Hazleton hated her--hated, because for the first time she began to fear. He had spoken to her in praise of another woman--with loud encomiums too, with a brightened eye, and a look which told her more than his words. These were signs not to be mistaken. They did not show in the least that he loved Emily Hastings, and that she knew right well; but they showed that he did not love her; and there was the poison in the cup.

So painful, so terrible was the sensation, that, with all her mastery over herself, she could not conceal the agony under which she writhed. She became silent, grave, fell into fits of thought, which clouded the broad brow, and made the fine-cut lip quiver. Mr. Marlow was surprised and grieved. He asked himself what could be the matter. Something had evidently made her sorrowful, and he could not trace the sorrow to its source; for she carefully avoided uttering one word in depreciation of Emily Hastings. In this she showed no woman's spirit. She could have stabbed her, had the girl been there in her presence; but she would not scratch her. Petty spite was too low for her, too small for the character of her mind. Hers was a heart capable of revenge, and would be satisfied with nothing less.

Mr. Marlow soothed her, spoke to her kindly, tenderly, tried to lead her mind away, to amuse, to entertain her. Oh, it was all gall and bitterness to her. He might have cursed, abused, insulted her, without, perhaps--diminishing her love--certainly without inflicting half the anguish that was caused by his gentle words. It is impossible to tell all the varied emotions that went on in her heart--at least for me. Shakspeare could have done it, but none less than Shakspeare. For a moment she knew not whether she loved or hated him; but she soon felt and knew it was love; and the hate, like lightning striking a rock, and glancing from the solid stone to rend a sapling, all turned away from him, to fall upon the head of poor unconscious Emily Hastings.

Though she could not recover from the blow she had received, yet she soon regained command over herself, conversed, smiled, banished absorbing thoughts, answered calmly, pertinently, even spoke in her own bright, brilliant way, with a few more figures and ornaments of speech than usual; for figures are things rather of the head than of the heart, and it was from the head that she was now speaking.

At length Mr. Marlow took his leave, and for the first time in life she was glad he was gone.

Mrs. Hazleton gave way to no burst of passion: she shed not a tear; she uttered no exclamation. That which was within her heart, was too intense for any such ordinary expression. She seated herself at a table, leaned her head upon her hand, and fixed her eyes upon one bright spot in the marquetry. There she sat for more than an entire hour, without a motion, and in the meantime what were the thoughts that passed through her brain? We have shown the feelings of her heart enough.

She formed plans; she determined her course; she looked around for means. Various persons suggested themselves to her mind as instruments. The three women, I have mentioned in a preceding chapter--the good sort of friends. But it was an agent she wanted, not a confidant. No, no, Mrs. Hazleton knew better than to have a confidant. She was her own best council-keeper, and she knew it. Nevertheless, these good ladies might serve to act in subordinate parts, and she assigned to each of them their position in her scheme with wonderful accuracy and skill. As she did so, however, she remembered that it was by the advice of Mrs. Warmington that she had brought Mr. Marlow to Hartwell Place; and in her heart's secret chamber she gave her fair friend a goodly benediction. She resolved to use her nevertheless--to use her as far as she could be serviceable; and she forgot not that she herself had been art and part in the scheme that had failed. She was not one to shelter herself from blame by casting the whole storm of disappointment upon another. She took her own full share. "If she was a fool so to advise," said Mrs. Hazleton, "'twas a greater fool to follow her advice."

She then turned to seek for the agent. No name presented itself but that of Shanks, the attorney; and she smiled bitterly when she thought of him. She recollected that Sir Philip Hastings had thrown him head-foremost down the steps of the terrace, and that was very satisfactory to her; for, although Mr. Shanks was a man who sometimes bore injuries very meekly, he never forgot them.

Nevertheless, she had somewhat a difficult part to play, for most agents have a desire of becoming confidants also, and that Mrs. Hazleton determined her attorney should not be. The task was to insinuate her purposes rather than to speak them--to act, without betraying the motive of action--to make another act, without committing herself by giving directions.

Nevertheless, Mrs. Hazleton arranged it all to her own satisfaction; and as she did so, amongst the apparently extinct ashes of former schemes, one small spark of hope began to glow, giving promise for the time to come. What did she propose? At first, nothing more than to drive Sir Philip Hastings and his family from the country, mingling the gratification of personal hatred with efforts for the accomplishment of her own purposes. It was a bold attempt, but Mrs. Hazleton had her plan; and she sat down and wrote for Mr. Shanks, the attorney.

## CHAPTER XV.

Decorum came in with the house of Hanover. I know not whether men and women in England were more virtuous before--I think not--but they certainly were more frank in both their virtues and their vices. There were fewer of those vices of conventionality thrown around the human heart--fewer I mean to say of those cold restraints, those gilded chains of society, which, like the ornaments that ladies wear upon their necks and arms, seem like fetters; but, I fear me, restrain but little human

## action, curb not passion, and are to the strong will but as the green

rushes round the limbs of the Hebrew giant. Decorum came into England with the house of Hanover; but I am speaking of a period before that, when ladies were less fearful of the tongue of scandal, when scandal itself was fearful of assailing virtue, when honesty of purpose and purity of heart could walk free in the broad day, and men did not venture to suppose evil acts perpetrated whenever, by a possibility, they could be committed.

Emily Hastings walked quietly along by the side of Mr. Marlow, through her father's park. There was no one with him, no keen matron's ear to listen to and weigh their words, no brother to pretend to accompany them, and either feel himself weary with the task or lighten it by seeking his own amusement apart. They were alone together, and they talked without restraint. Ye gods, how they did talk! The dear girl was in one of her brightest, gayest moods. There was nothing that did not move her fancy or become a servant to it. The clouds as they shot across the sky, the blue fixed hills in the distance, the red and yellow and green coloring of the young budding oaks, the dancing of The stream, the song of the bird, the whisper of the wind, the misty spring light which spread over the morning distance, all had illustrations for her thoughts. It seemed that day as if she could not speak without a figure--as if she revelled in the flowers of imagination, like a child tossing about the new mown grass in a hay-field. And he, with joyous sport, took pleasure in furnishing her at every moment with new material for the bounding play of fancy.

They had not known each other long; but there was something in the young man's manner--nay, let me go farther--in his character, which invited confidence, which besought the hearts around to throw off all strange disguise, and promised that he would take no base advantage of their openness. That something was perhaps his earnestness: one felt that he was true in all he said or did or looked: that his words were but his spoken feelings: his countenance a paper on which the heart at once recorded its sensations. But let me not be mistaken. Do not let it be supposed that when I say he was earnest, I mean that he was even grave. Oh no! Earnestness can exist as well in the merriest as in the soberest heart. One can be as earnest, as truthful, even as eager in joy or sport, as in sorrow or sternness. But he was earnest in all things, and it was this earnestness which probably found a way for him to so many dissimilar hearts.

Emily knew not at all what it was doing with hers; but she felt that he was one before whom she had no need to hide a thought: that if she were gay, she might be gay in safety: that if she were inclined to muse, she might muse on in peace.

Onward they walked, talking of every thing on earth but love. It was in the thoughts of neither. Emily knew nothing about it: the tranquil expanse of life had never for her been even rippled by the wing of passion. Marlow might know more; but for the time he was lost in the enjoyment of the moment. The little enemy might be carrying on the war against the fortress of each unconscious bosom; but if so, it was by the silent sap and mine, more potent far than the fierce assault or thundering cannonade--at least in this sort of warfare.

They were wending their way towards a gate, at the very extreme limit of the park, which opened upon a path leading by a much shorter way to Mr. Marlow's own dwelling than the road he usually pursued. He had that morning come to spend but an hour at the house of Sir Philip Hastings, and he had an engagement at his own house at noon. He had spent two hours instead of one with Emily and her mother, and therefore short paths were preferable to long ones for his purpose, Emily had offered to show him the way to the gate, and her company was sure to shorten the road, though it might lengthen the time it took to travel.

Now in describing the park of Sir Philip Hastings, I have said that there was a wide open space around the mansion; but I have also said, that at some distance the trees gathered thick and sombre. Those nearest the house gathered together in clumps, confusing the eye in a wilderness of hawthorns, and bushes, and evergreen oaks, while beyond appeared a dense mass of wood; and, through the scattered tufts of trees and thick woodland at the extreme of the park ran several paths traced by deer, and park-keepers, and country folk. Thus for various reasons some guidance was needful to Marlow on his way, and for more reasons still he was well pleased that the guide should be Emily Hastings. In the course of their walk, amongst many other subjects they spoke of Mrs. Hazleton, and Marlow expatiated warmly on her beauty, and grace, and kindness of heart. How different was the effect of all this upon Emily Hastings from that which his words in her praise had produced upon her of whom he spoke! Emily's heart was free. Emily had no schemes, no plans, no purposes. She knew not that there was one feeling in her bosom with which praise of Mrs. Hazleton could ever jar. She loved her well. Such eyes as hers are not practised in seeing into darkness. She had divined the Italian singer--perhaps by instinct, perhaps by some distinct trait, which occasionally will betray the most wily. But Mrs. Hazleton was a fellow-woman--a woman of great brightness and many fine qualities. Neither had she any superficial defects to indicate a baser metal or a harder within. If she was not all gold, she was doubly gilt.

Emily praised her too, warmed with the theme; and eagerly exclaimed, "She always seems to me like one of those dames of fairy tales, upon whom some enchanter has bestowed a charm that no one can resist. It is not her beauty; for I feel the same when I hear her voice and shut my eyes. It is not her conversation; for I feel the same when I look at her and she is silent. It seems to breathe from her presence like the odor of a flower. It is the same when she is grave as when she is gay."

"Aye, and when she is melancholy," replied Marlow. "I never felt it more powerfully than a few days ago when I spent an hour with her, and she was not only grave but sad."

"Melancholy!" exclaimed Emily. "I never saw her so. Grave I have seen her--thoughtful, silent--but never sad; and I do not know that she has not seemed more charming to me in those grave, stiller moods, than in more cheerful ones. Do you know that in looking at the beautiful statues which I have seen in London, I have often thought they might lose half their charm if they would move and speak? Thus, too, with Mrs. Hazleton; she seems to me even more lovely, more full of grace, in perfect stillness than at any other time. My father," she added, after a moment's pause, "is the only one who in her presence seems spell-proof."

Her words threw Marlow into a momentary fit of thought. "Why," he asked himself, "was Sir Philip Hastings spell-proof when all others were charmed?"

Men have a habit of depending much upon men's judgment, whether justly or unjustly I will not stop to inquire. They rely less upon woman's judgment in such matters; and yet women are amongst the keenest discerners--when they are unbiassed by passion. But are they often so? Perhaps it is from a conviction that men judge less frequently from impulse, decide more generally from cause, that this presumption of their accuracy exists. Woman--perhaps from seclusion, perhaps from nature--is more a creature of instincts than man. They are given her for defence where reason would act too slowly; and where they do act strongly, they are almost invariably right. Man goes through the slower process, and naturally relies more firmly on the result; for reason demonstrates where instinct leads blindfold. Marlow judged Sir Philip Hastings by himself, and fancied that he must have some cause for being spell-proof against the fascinations of Mrs. Hazleton. This roused the first doubt in his mind as to her being all that she seemed. He repelled the doubt as injurious, but it returned from time to time in after days, and at length gave him a clue to an intricate labyrinth.

The walk came to an end, too soon he thought. Emily pointed out the gate as soon as it appeared in sight, shook hands with him and returned homeward. He thought more of her after they had parted, than when she was with him. There are times when the most thoughtful do not think--when they enjoy. But now, every word, every look of her who had just left him, came back to memory. Not that he would admit to himself that there was the least touch of love in his feelings. Oh no! He had known her too short a time for such a serious passion as love to have any thing to do with his sensations. He only thought of her--mused--pondered--recalled all she had said and done, because she was so unlike any thing he had seen or heard of before--a something new--a something to be studied.

She was but a girl--a mere child, he said; and yet there was something more than childish grace in that light, but rounded form, where beauty was more than budding, but not quite blossomed, like a moss-rose in its loveliest state of loveliness. And her mind too; there was nothing childish in her thoughts except their playfulness. The morning dew-drops had not yet exhaled; but the day-star of the mind was well up in the sky.

She was one of those, on whom it is dangerous for a man afraid of love to meditate too long. She was one the effect of whose looks and words is not evanescent. That of mere beauty passes away. How many a face do we see and think it the loveliest in the world; yet shut the eyes an hour after, and try to recall the features--to paint them to the mind's eye. You cannot. But there are others that link themselves with every feeling of the heart, that twine themselves with constantly recurring thoughts, that never can be effaced--never forgotten--on which age or time, disease or death, may do its work without effecting one change in the reality embalmed in memory. Destroy the die, break the mould, you may; but the medal and the cast remain. Had Marlow lived a hundred years--had he never seen Emily Hastings again, not one line of her bright face, not one speaking look, would have passed from his memory. He could have painted a portrait of her had he been an artist. Did you ever gaze long at the sun, trying your eyes against the eagle's? If so, you have had the bright orb floating before your eyes the whole day after. And so it was with Marlow: throughout the long hours that followed, he had Emily Hastings ever before him. But yet he did not love her. Oh dear no, not in the least. Love he thought was very different from mere admiration. It was a plant of slower growth. He was no believer in love at first sight. He was an infidel as to Romeo and Juliet, and he had firmly resolved if ever he did fall in love, it should be done cautiously.

Poor man! he little knew how deep he was in already.

In the meanwhile, Emily walked onward. She was heart-whole at least. She had never dreamed of love. It had not been one of her studies. Her father had never presented the idea to her. Her mother had often talked of marriage, and marriages good and bad; but always put them in the light of alliances--compacts--negotiated treaties. Although Lady Hastings knew what love is as well as any one, and had felt it as deeply, yet she did not wish her daughter to be as romantic as she had been, and therefore the subject was avoided. Emily thought a good deal of Mr. Marlow, it is true. She thought him handsome, graceful, winning--one of the pleasantest companions she had ever known. She liked him better than any one she had ever seen; and his words rang in her ears long after they were spoken. But even imagination, wicked spinner of golden threads as she is, never drew one link between his fate and hers. The time had not yet come, if it was to come.

She walked on, however, through the wood; and just when she was emerging from the thicker part into the clumps and scattered trees, she saw a stranger before her, leaning against the stump of an old hawthorn, and seeming to suffer pain. He was young, handsome, well-dressed, and there was a gun lying at his feet. But as Emily drew nearer, she saw blood slowly trickling from his arm, and falling on the gray sand of the path.

She was not one to suffer shyness to curb humanity; and she exclaimed at once, with a look of alarm, "I am afraid you are hurt, sir. Had you not better come up to the house?"

The young man looked at her, fainted, and answered in a low tone, "The gun has gone off, caught by a branch, and has shattered my arm. I thought I could reach the cottage by the park gates, but I feel faint."

"Stay, stay a moment," cried Emily, "I will run to the hall and bring assistance--people to assist you upon a carriage."

"No, no!" answered the stranger quickly, "I cannot go there--I will not go there! The cottage is nearer," he continued more calmly; "I think with a little help I could reach it, if I could staunch the blood."

"Let me try," exclaimed Emily; and with ready zeal, she tied her handkerchief round his arm, not without a shaking hand indeed, but with firmness and some skill.

"Now lean upon me," she said, when she had done; "the cottage is indeed nearer, but you would have better tendance if you could reach the hall."

"No, no, the cottage," replied the stranger, "I shall do well there."

The cottage was perhaps two hundred yards nearer to the spot on which they stood than the hall; but there was an eagerness about the young man's refusal to go to the latter, which Emily remarked. Suspicion indeed was alive to her mind; but those were days when laws concerning game, which have every year been becoming less and less strict, were hardly less severe than in the time of William Rufus. Every day, in the country life which she led, she heard some tale of poaching or its punishment. The stranger had a gun with him; she had found him in her father's park; he was unwilling even in suffering and need of help to go up to the hall for succor; and she could not but fancy that for some frolic, perhaps some jest, or some wild whim, he had been trespassing upon the manor in pursuit of game. That he was an ordinary poacher she could not suppose; his dress, his appearance forbade such a supposition.

But there was something more.

In the young man's face--more in its expression than its features perhaps--more in certain marking lines and sudden glances than in the general whole--there was something familiar to her--something that seemed akin to her. He was handsomer than her father; of a more perfect though less lofty character of beauty; and yet there was a strange likeness, not constant, but flashing occasionally upon her brow, in what, when, she could hardly determine.

It roused another sort of sympathy from any she had felt before; and once more she asked him to go up to the hall.

"If you have been taking your sport," she said, "where perhaps you ought not, I am sure my father will look over it without a word, when he sees how you are hurt. Although people sometimes think he is stern and severe, that is all a mistake. He is kind and gentle, I assure you, when he does not feel that duty requires him to be rigid."

The stranger gave a quick start, and replied in a tone which would have been haughty and fierce, had not weakness subdued it, "I have been shooting only where I have a right to shoot. But I will not go up to the hall, till--but I dare say I can get down to the cottage without help, Mistress Emily. I have been accustomed to do without help in the world;" and he withdrew his arm from that which supported him. The next moment, however, he tottered, and seemed ready to fall, and Emily again hurried to help him. There were no more words spoken. She thought his manner somewhat uncivil; she would not leave him, and the necessity for her kindness was soon apparent. Ere they were within a hundred yards of the cottage, he sunk slowly down. His face grew pale and death-like, and his eyes closed faintly as he lay upon the turf. Emily ran on like lightning to the cottage, and called out the old man who lived there. The old man called his son from the little garden, and with his and other help, carried the fainting man in.

"Ay, master John, master John," exclaimed the old cottager, as he laid him in his own bed; "one of your wild pranks, I warrant!"

His wife, his son, and he himself tended the young man with care; and a young boy was sent off for a surgeon.

Emily did not know what to do; but compassion kept her in the cottage till the stranger recovered his consciousness, and then after inquiring how he felt, she was about to withdraw, intending to send down further aid from the hall. But the stranger beckoned her faintly to come nearer, and said in tones of real gratitude, "Thank you a thousand times, Mistress Emily; I never thought to need such kindness at your hands. But now do me another, and say not a word to any one at the mansion of what has happened. It will be better for me, for you, for your father, that you should not speak of this business."

"Do not! do not! Mistress Emily!" cried the old man, who was standing near. "It will only make mischief and bring about evil."

He spoke evidently under strong apprehension, and Emily was much surprised, both to find that one quite a stranger to her knew her at once, and to find the old cottager, a long dependant upon her family, second so eagerly his strange injunction.

"I will say nothing unless questions are asked me," she replied; "then of course I must tell the truth."

"Better not," replied the young man gloomily.

"I cannot speak falsely," replied the beautiful girl, "I cannot deal doubly with my parents or any one," and she was turning away.

But the stranger besought her to stop one moment, and said, "I have not strength to explain all now; but I shall see you again, and then I will tell you why I have spoken as you think strangely. I shall see you again. In common charity you will come to ask if I am alive or dead. If you knew how near we are to each other, I am sure you would promise!"

"I can make no such promise," replied Emily; but the old cottager seemed eager to end the interview; and speaking for her, he exclaimed, "Oh, she will come, I am sure, Mistress Emily will come;" and hurried her away, seeing her back to the little gate in the park wall.

## CHAPTER XVI.

Mrs. Hazleton found Mr. Shanks, the attorney, the most difficult person to deal with whom she had ever met in her life. She had remarked that he was keen, active, intelligent, unscrupulous, confident in his own powers, bold as a lion in the wars of quill, parchment, and red tape; without fear, without hesitation, without remorse. There was nothing that he scrupled to do, nothing that he ever repented having done. She had fancied that the only difficulty which she could have to encounter was that of concealing from him, at least in a degree, the ultimate objects and designs which she herself had in view.

So shrewd people often deceive themselves as to the character of other shrewd people. The difficulty was quite different. It was a peculiar sort of stolidity on the part of Mr. Shanks, for which she was utterly unprepared.

Now the attorney was ready to do any thing on earth which his fair patroness wished. He would have perilled his name on the roll in her service; and was only eager to understand what were her desires, even without giving her the trouble of explaining them. Moreover, there was no point of law or equity, no manner of roguery or chicanery, no object of avarice, covetousness, or ambition, which he could not have comprehended at once. They were things within his own ken and scope, to which the intellect and resources of his mind were always open. But to other passions, to deeper, more remote motives and emotions, Mr. Shanks was as stolid as a door-post. It required to hew a way as it were to his perceptions, to tunnel his mind for the passage of a new conception.

The only passion which afforded the slightest cranny of an opening was revenge; and after having tried a dozen other ways of making him comprehend what she wished without committing herself, Mrs. Hazleton got him to understand that she thought Sir Philip Hastings had injured--at all events, that he had offended--her, and that she sought vengeance. From that moment all was easy. Mr. Shanks could understand the feeling, though not its extent. He would himself have given ten pounds out of his own pocket--the largest sum he had ever given in life for any thing but an advantage--to be revenged upon the same man for the insult he had received; and he could perceive that Mrs. Hazleton would go much further, without, indeed, being able to conceive, or even dream of, the extent to which she was prepared to go.

However, when he had once got the clue, he was prepared to run along the road with all celerity; and now she found him every thing she had expected. He was a man copious in resources, prolific of schemes. His imagination had exercised itself through life in devising crooked paths; but in this instance the road was straight-forward before him. He would rather it had been tortuous, it is true; but for the sake of his dear lady he was ready to follow even a plain path, and he explained to her that Sir Philip Hastings stood in a somewhat dangerous position.

He was proceeding to enter into the details, but Mrs. Hazleton interrupted him, and, to his surprise, not only told him, but showed him, that she knew all the particulars.

"The only question is, Mr. Shanks," she said, "can you prove the marriage of his elder brother to this woman before the birth of the child?"

"We think we can, madam," replied the attorney, "we think we can. There is a very strong letter, and there has been evidently----"

He paused and hesitated, and Mrs. Hazleton demanded, "There has been what, Mr. Shanks?"

"There has been evidently a leaf torn out of the register," replied the lawyer.

There was something in his manner which made the lady gaze keenly in his face; but she would ask no questions on that subject, and she merely said, "Then why has not the case gone on, as it was put in your hands six months ago?"

"Why, you see, my dear madam," replied Shanks, "law is at best uncertain. One wants two or three great lawyers to make a case. Money was short; John and his mother had spent all last year's annuity. Barristers won't plead without fees, and besides----"

He paused again, but an impatient gesture from the lady urged him on. "Besides," he said, "I had devised a little scheme, which, of course, I shall abandon now, for marrying him to Mistress Emily Hastings. He is a very handsome young fellow, and----"

"I have seen him," said Mrs. Hazleton thoughtfully, "but why should you abandon this scheme, Mr. Shanks? It seems to me by no means a bad one."

The poor lawyer was now all at sea again and fancied himself as wide of the lady's aim as ever.

Mrs. Hazleton suffered him to remain in this dull suspense for some time. Wrapped up in her own thoughts, and busy with her own calculations, she suffered several minutes to elapse without adding a word to that which had so much surprised the attorney. Then, however, she said, in a meditative tone, "There is only one way by which it can be accomplished. If you allow it to be conducted in a formal manner, you will fail utterly. Sir Philip will never consent. She will never even yield."

"But if Sir Philip is made to see that it will save him a tremendous lawsuit, and perhaps his whole estate," suggested Mr. Shanks.

"He will resist the more firmly," answered the lady; "if it saved his life, he would reject it with scorn--no! But there is a way. If you can persuade her--if you can show her that her father's safety, his position in life, depends upon her conduct, perhaps you may bring her by degrees to consent to a private marriage. She is young, inexperienced, enthusiastic, romantic. She loves her father devotedly, and would make any sacrifice for him."

"No great sacrifice, I should think, madam," replied Mr. Shanks, "to marry a handsome young man who has a just claim to a large fortune."

"That is as people may judge," replied the lady; "but at all events this claim gives us a hold upon her which we must not fail to use, and that directly. I will contrive means of bringing them together. I will make opportunity for the lad, but you must instruct him how to use it properly. All I can do is to co-operate without appearing."

"But, my dear madam, I really do not fully understand," said Mr. Shanks. "I had a fancy--a sort of imagination like, that you wished--that you desired----"

He hesitated; but Mrs. Hazleton would not help him by a single word, and at last he added, "I had a fancy that you wished this suit to go on against Sir Philip Hastings, and now--but that does not matter--only do you really wish to bring it all to an end, to settle it by a marriage between John and Mistress Emily?'

"That will be the pleasantest, the easiest way of settling it, sir," replied Mrs. Hazleton, coolly; "and I do not at all desire to injure, but rather to serve Sir Philip and his family."

That was false, for though to marry Emily Hastings to any one but Mr. Marlow was what the lady did very sincerely desire; yet there was a long account to be settled with Sir Philip Hastings which could not well be discharged without a certain amount of injury to him and his. The lady was well aware, too, that she had told a lie, and moreover that it was one which Mr. Shanks was not at all likely to believe. Perhaps even she did not quite wish him to believe it, and at all events she knew that her actions must soon give it contradiction. But men make strange distinctions between speech and action, not to be accounted for without long investigation and disquisition. There are cases where people shrink from defining in words their purposes, or giving voice to their feelings, even when they are prepared by acts to stamp them for eternity. There are cases where men do acts which they dare not cover by a lie.

Mrs. Hazleton sought for no less than the ruin of Sir Philip Hastings; she had determined it in her own heart, and yet she would not own it to her agent--perhaps she would not own it to herself. There is a dark secret chamber in the breast of every one, at the door of which the eyes of the spirit are blindfolded, that it may not see the things to which it is consenting. Conscience records them silently, and sooner or later her book is to be opened; it may be in this world: it may be in the next: but for the time that book is in the keeping of passion, who rarely suffers the pages to be seen till purpose has been ratified by act, and remorse stands ready to pronounce the doom.

There was a pause after Mrs. Hazleton had spoken, for the attorney was busy also with thoughts he wished to utter, yet dared not speak. The first prospect of a lawsuit--the only sort of the picturesque in which he could find pleasure--a long, intricate, expensive lawsuit, was fading before his eyes as if a mist were coming over the scene. Where were his consultations, his letters, his briefs, his pleas, his rejoinders, his demurrers, his appeals? Where were the fees, the bright golden fees? True, in the hopelessness of his young client's fortunes, he had urged the marriage with a proviso, that if it took place by his skilful management, a handsome bonus was to be his share of the spoil. But then Mrs. Hazleton's first communication had raised brighter hopes, had put him more in his own element, had opened to him a scene of achievements as glorious to his notions as those of the listed field to knights of old; and now all was vanishing away. Yet he did not venture to tell her how much he was disappointed, still less to show her why and how.

It was the lady who spoke first; and she did so in as calm, deliberate, passionless a tone as if she had been devising the fashion of a new Mantua.

"It may be as well, Mr. Shanks," she said, "in order to produce the effect we wish upon dear Emily's mind"--dear Emily!--"to commence the suit against Sir Philip--I mean to take those first steps which may create some alarm. I cannot of course judge what they ought to be, but you must know; and if not, you must seek advice from counsel learned in the law. You understand what I mean, doubtless."

"Oh, certainly, madam, certainly," replied Mr. Shanks, with a profound sigh of relief. "First steps commit us to nothing: but they must be devised cautiously, and I am very much afraid that--that----"

"Afraid of what, sir?" asked Mrs. Hazleton, in a tone somewhat stern.

"Only that the expense will be greater than my young client can afford," answered the lawyer, seeing that he must come to the point.

"Let not that stand in the way," said Mrs. Hazleton at once; "I will supply the means. What will be the expense?"

"Would you object to say five hundred pounds?" asked the lawyer, cautiously.

"A thousand," replied the lady, with a slight inclination of the head; and then, weary of circumlocution, she added in a bolder tone than she had yet used, "only remember, sir, that what is done must be done effectually; no mistakes, no errors, no flaws! See that you use all your eyes--see that you bend every nerve to the task. I will have no procrastination for the sake of fresh fees--nothing omitted one day to be remembered the next--no blunders to be corrected after long delays and longer correspondence. I know you lawyers and your ways right well; and if I find that for the sake of swelling a bill to the bursting, you attempt to procrastinate, the cause will be taken at once from your hands and placed in those who will do their work more speedily. You can practise those tricks upon those who are more or less in your power; but you shall not play them upon me."

"I declare, my dear madam, I can assure you," said Mr. Shanks; but Mrs. Hazleton cut him short. "There, there," she said, waving her fair hand, "do not declare--do not assure me of any thing. Let your actions speak, Mr. Shanks. I am too much accustomed to declarations and assurances to set much value upon them. Now tell me, but in as few words and with as few cant terms as possible, what are the chances of success in this suit? How does the young man's case really stand?"

Mr. Shanks would gladly have been excused such explanations. He never liked to speak clearly upon such delicate questions, but he would not venture to refuse any demand of Mrs. Hazleton's, and therefore he began with a circumlocution in regard to the uncertainty of law, and to the impossibility of giving any exact assurances of success.

The lady would not be driven from her point, however. "That is not what I sought to know," she said. "I am as well aware of the law's uncertainty--of its iniquity, as you. But I ask you what grounds you have to go upon? Were they ever really married? Is this son legitimate?"

"The lady says they were married," replied Mr. Shanks cautiously, "and I have good hope we can prove the legitimacy. There is a letter in which the late Mr. John Hastings calls her 'my dear little wife;' and then there is clearly a leaf torn out of the marriage register about that very time."

Mr. Shanks spoke the last words slowly and with some hesitation; but after a pause he went on more boldly and rapidly. "Then we have a deposition of the old woman Danby that they were married. This is clear and precise," he continued with a grin: "she wanted to put in something about 'in the eyes of God,' but I left that out as beside the question; and she did the swearing very well. She might have broken down under cross-examination, it is true; and therefore it was well to put off the trial till she was gone. We can prove, moreover, that the late Sir John always paid an annuity to both mother and child, in order to make them keep secret--nay more, that he bribed the old woman Danby. This is our strong point; but it is beyond doubt--I can prove it, madam--I can prove it. All I fear is the mother; she is weak--very weak; I wish to heaven she were out of the way till the trial is over."

"Send her out of the way," cried Mrs. Hazleton, decidedly; "send her to France;" and then she added, with a bitter smile, "she may still figure amongst the beauties of Versailles."

"But she will not go," replied Mr. Shanks. "Madam, she will not go. I hinted at such a step--mentioned Cornwall or Ireland--any where she could be concealed."

"Cornwall or Ireland!" exclaimed Mrs. Hazleton, "of course she would not go. Why did not you propose Africa or the plantations? She shall go, Mr. Shanks. Leave her to me. She shall go. And now, set to work at once--immediately, I say--this very day. Send the youth to-morrow, and let him bring me word that some step is taken. I will instruct him how to act, while you deal with the law."

Mr. Shanks promised to obey, and retired overawed by all he had seen and heard. There had, it is true, been no vehement demonstration of passion; no fierce blaze; no violent flash; but there had been indications enough to show the man of law all that was raging within. It had been for him like gazing at a fine building on fire at that period of the conflagration where dense smoke and heavy darkness brood over the fearful scene, while dull, suddenly-smothered flashes break across the gloom, and tell how terrible will be the flame when it does burst freely forth.

He had never known Mrs. Hazleton before--he had never comprehended her fully. But now he knew her--now, though perhaps the depths were still unfathomable to his eyes, he felt that there was a strong commanding will within that beautiful form which would bear no trifling. He had often treated her with easy lightness--with no want of apparent respect indeed--but with the persuasions and arguments such as men of business often address to women as beings inferior to themselves either in intellect or experience. Now Mr. Shanks wondered how he had escaped so long and so well, and he resolved that for the future his conduct should be very different.

Mrs. Hazleton, when he left her, sat down to rest--yes, to rest; for she was very weary. There had been the fatiguing strife of strong passions in the heart--hopes--expectations--schemes-contrivances; and, above all, there had been a wrestling with herself to deal calmly and softly where she felt fiercely. It had exhausted her; and for some minutes she sat listlessly, with her eyes half shut, like one utterly tired out. Ere a quarter of an hour had passed, wheels rolled up to the door; a carriage-step was let down, and there was a foot-fall in the hall.

"Dear Mrs. Warmington, delighted to see you!" said Mrs. Hazleton, with a smile sweet and gentle as the dawn of a summer morning.

## CHAPTER XVII.

Circumstance will always have its finger in the pie with the best-laid schemes; but it does not always happen that thereby the pie is spoiled. On the contrary, circumstance is sometimes a very powerful auxiliary, and it happened so in the present instance with the arrangements of Mrs. Hazleton. Before that lady could bring any part of her scheme for introducing Emily to the man whom she intended to drive her into taking as a husband, to bear, the introduction had already taken place, as we have seen, by an accident.

It was likely, indeed, to go no further; for Emily thought over what had occurred, before she gave way to her native kindness of heart. She remembered how tenacious all country gentlemen of that day were of their sporting rights, and especially of what she had often heard her father declare, that he looked upon any body who took his game off his property, according to every principle of equity and justice, as no better than a common robber.

"If the only excuse be that it is more exposed to depredation than other property," said Sir Philip, "it only shows that the plunderer of it is a coward as well as a villain, and should be punished the more severely." Such, and many such speeches she had heard from her father at various times, and it became a case of conscience, which puzzled the poor girl much, whether she ought or ought not to have promised not to mention what had occurred in the park. She loved no concealment, and nothing would have induced her to tell a falsehood; but she knew that if she mentioned the facts, especially while the young man whom she had seen crossing the park with a gun lay wounded at the cottage, great evil might have resulted; and though she somewhat reproached herself for rashly giving her word, she would not break it when given.

As to seeing him again, however--as to visiting him at the cottage, even to inquire after his health, when he had refused all aid from her father's house, that was an act she never dreamed of. His last words, indeed, had puzzled her; and there was something in his face, too, which set her fancy wandering. It was not exactly what she liked; but yet there was a resemblance, she thought, to some one she knew and was attached to. It could not be to her father, she said to herself, and yet her father's face recurred to her mind more frequently than any other when she thought of that of the young man she had seen; and from that fact a sort of prepossession in the youth's favor took possession of her, making her long to know who he really was.

For some days Emily did not go near the cottage, but at length she ventured on the road which passed it--not without a hope, indeed, that she might meet one of the old people who tenanted it, and have an opportunity of inquiring after his health--but certainly not, as some good-natured reader may suppose, with any expectation of seeing him herself. As she approached, however, she perceived him sitting on a bench at the cottage-door, and, by a natural impulse, she turned at once into another path, which led back by a way nearly as short to the hall. The young man instantly rose, and followed her, addressing her by name, in a voice still weak, in truth, but too loud for her not to hear, or to affect not to hear.

She paused, rather provoked than otherwise, and slightly inclined her head, while the young man approached, with every appearance of respect, and thanked her for the assistance she had rendered him.

He had had his lesson in the mean time, and he played his part not amiss. All coarse swagger, all vulgar assumption was gone from his manner; and referring himself to some words he had spoken when last they had met, he said: "Pardon me, Miss Hastings, for what I said some days ago, which might seem both strange and mysterious, and for pressing to see you again; but at that time I was faint with loss of blood, and knew not how this might end. I wished to tell you something I thought you ought to hear; but now I am better; and I will find a more fitting opportunity ere long."

"It will be better to say any thing you think fit to my father," replied Emily. "I am not accustomed to deal with any matters of importance; and any thing of so much moment as you seem to think this is, would, of course, be told by me to him."

"I think not," replied the other, with a mysterious smile; "but of that you will judge when you have heard all I have to say. Your father is the last person to whom I would mention it myself, because I believe, notwithstanding all his ability, he is the last person who would judge sanely of it, as he would of most other matters; but, of course, you will speak of it or not, as you think proper. At present," he added, "I am too weak to attempt the detail, even if I could venture to detain you here. I only wished to return you my best thanks, and assure you of my gratitude," and bowing low, he left her to pursue her way homeward.

Emily went on musing. No woman's breast is without curiosity--nor any man's, either--and she asked herself what could be the meaning of the stranger's words, at least a dozen times. What could he have to tell her, and why was there so much mystery? She did not like mystery, however; and though she felt interested in the young man--felt _pity_, in fact--yet it was by no means the interest that leads to, nor the pity which is akin to love. On the contrary, she liked him less than the first time she saw him. There was a certain degree of cunning in his mysterious smile, a look of self-confidence, almost of triumph in his face, which, in spite of his respectful demeanor, did not please her.

Emily's father was absent from home at this time; but he returned two or three days after this last interview, and remarked that his daughter was unusually grave. To her, and to all that affected her in any way, his eyes were always open, though he often failed to comprehend that which he observed. Lady Hastings, too, had noticed Emily's unusual gravity, and as she had no clue to that which made her thoughtful, she concluded that the solitude of the country had a depressing influence upon her spirits, as it frequently had upon her own; and she determined to speak to her husband upon the matter. To him she represented that the place was very dull; that they had but few visitors; that even Mr. Marlow had not called for a week; and that Emily really required some variety of scene and amusement.

She reasoned well according to her notions, and though Sir Philip could not quite comprehend them, though he abhorred great cities, and loved the country, she had made some impression at least by reiteration, when suddenly a letter arrived from Mrs. Hazleton, petitioning that Emily might be permitted to spend a few days with her.

"I am quite alone," she said, "and not very well (she never was better in her life), and I propose next week to make some excursions to all the beautiful and interesting spots in the neighborhood. But you know, dear Lady Hastings, there is but small pleasure in such expeditions when they must be solitary; but with such a mind as that of your dear Emily for my companion, every object will possess a double interest."

The reader has perceived that the letter was addressed to Lady Hastings; but it was written for the eye of Sir Philip, and to him it was shown. Lady Hastings observed, as she put the note into her husband's hand, that it would be much better to go to London. The change from their own house to Mrs. Hazleton's was not enough to do Emily any good; and that, as to these expeditions to neighboring places, she had always found them the dullest things imaginable.

Sir Philip thought differently, however. He had been brought to the point of believing that Emily did want change, but not to the conviction that London would afford the best change for her. He inquired of Emily, however, which she would like best, a visit of a week to Mrs. Hazleton's, or a short visit to the metropolis. Much to his satisfaction, Emily decided at once in favor of the former, and Mrs. Hazleton's letter was answered, accepting her invitation.

The day before Emily went, Mr. Marlow spent nearly two hours with her and her father in the sort of musy, wandering conversation which is so delightful to imaginative minds. He paid Emily herself no marked or

## particular attention; but he never suffered her to doubt that even while

talking with her father, he was fully conscious of her presence, and pleased with it. Sometimes his conversation was addressed to her directly, and when it was not, by a word or look he would invite her to join in, and listened to her words as if they were very sweet to his ear.

She loved to listen to him, however, better than to speak herself, and he contrived to please and interest her in all he said, gently moving all sorts of various feelings, sometimes making her smile gayly, sometimes muse thoughtfully, and sometimes rendering her almost sad. If he had been the most practiced love-maker in the world, he could not have done better with a mind like that of Emily Hastings.

He heard of her proposed visit to Mrs. Hazleton with pleasure, and expressed it. "I am very glad to hear you are to be with her," he said, "for I do not think Mrs. Hazleton is well. She has lost her usual spirits, and has been very grave and thoughtful when I have seen her lately."

"Oh, if I can cheer and soothe her," cried Emily eagerly, "how delightful my visit will be to me. Mrs. Hazleton says in her letter that she is unwell; and that decided me to go to her, rather than to London."

"To London!" exclaimed Mr. Marlow, "I had no idea that you proposed such a journey. Oh, Sir Philip, do not take your daughter to London. Friends of mine there are often in the habit of bringing in fresh and beautiful flowers from the country; but I always see that first they become dull and dingy with the smoke and heavy air, and then wither away and perish; and often in gay parties, I have thought that I saw in the young and beautiful around me the same dulling influence, the same withering, both of the body and the heart."

Sir Philip Hastings smiled pleasantly, and assured his young friend that he had no desire or intention of going to the capital except for one month in the winter, and Emily looked up brightly, saying, "For my part, I only wish that even then I could be left behind. When last I was there, I was so tired of the blue velvet lining of the gilt _vis-a-vis_, that I used to try and paint fancy pictures of the country upon it as I drove through the streets with mamma."

At length Emily set out in the heavy family coach, with her maid and Sir Philip for her escort. Progression was slow in those days compared with our own, when a man can get as much event into fifty years as Methuselah did into a thousand. The journey took three hours at the least; but it seemed short to Emily, for at the end of the first hour they were overtaken by Mr. Marlow on horseback, and he rode along with them to the gate of Mrs. Hazleton's house. He was an admirable horseman, for he had not only a good but a graceful seat, and his handsome figure and fine gentlemanly carriage never appeared to greater advantage than when he did his best to be a centaur. The slow progress of the lumbering vehicle might have been of some inconvenience, but his horse was trained to canter to a walk when he pleased, and, leaning to the window of the carriage, and sometimes resting his hand upon it, he contrived to carry on the conversation with those within almost as easily as in a drawing-room.

Just as the carriage was approaching the gate, Marlow said: "I think I shall not go in with you, Sir Philip; for I have a little business farther on, and I have ridden more slowly than I thought;" but before the sentence was well concluded, the gates of the park were opened by the porter, and Mrs. Hazleton herself appeared within, leaning on the arm of her maid. She had calculated well the period of Emily's arrival, and had gone out to the gate for the purpose of giving her an extremely hospitable welcome. Probably, had she not hated her as warmly and sincerely as she did, she would have stayed at home; our attention is ever doubtful.

But what were Mrs. Hazleton's feelings when she saw Mr. Marlow riding by the side of the carriage? I will not attempt to describe them; but for one instant a strange dark cloud passed over her beautiful face. It was banished in an instant; but not before Marlow had remarked both the expression itself and the sudden glance of the lady's eyes from him to Emily. For the first time a doubt, a suspicion, a something he did not like to fathom, came over his mind; and he resolved to watch. Neither Emily nor her father perceived that look, and as the next moment the beautiful face was once more as bright as ever, they felt pleased with her kind eagerness to meet them; and alighting from the carriage, walked on with her to the house, while Marlow, dismounted, accompanied them, leading his horse.

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Marlow," said Mrs. Hazleton, in a tone from which she could not do what she would--banish all bitterness. "I suppose I owe the pleasure of your visit to that which you yourself feel in escorting a fair lady."

"I must not, I fear, pretend to such gallantry," replied Marlow. "I overtook the carriage accidentally as I was riding to Mr. Cornelius Brown's; and to say the truth, I did not intend to come in, for I am somewhat late."

"Cold comfort for my vanity," replied the lady, "that you would not have paid me a visit unless you had met me at the gate."

She spoke in a tone rather of sadness than of anger; but Marlow did not choose to perceive any thing serious in her words, and he replied, laughing: "Nay, dear Mrs. Hazleton, you do not read the riddle aright. It shows, when rightly interpreted, that your society is so charming that I cannot resist its influence when once within the spell, even for the sake of the Englishman's god--Business."

"A man always succeeds in drawing some flattery for woman's ear out of the least flattering conduct," answered Mrs. Hazleton.

The conversation then took another turn; and after walking with the rest of the party up to the house, Marlow again mounted and rode away. As soon as the horses had obtained some food and repose, Sir Philip also returned, and Emily was left, with a woman who felt at her heart that she could have poniarded her not an hour before.

But Mrs. Hazleton was all gentle sweetness, and calm, thoughtful, dignified ease. She did not suffer her attention to be diverted for one moment from her fair guest: there were no reveries, no absence of mind; and Emily--poor Emily--thought her more charming than ever. Nevertheless, while speaking upon many subjects, and brightly and intelligently upon all, there was an under-current of thought going on unceasingly in Mrs. Hazleton's mind, different from that upon the surface. She was trying to read Marlow's conduct towards Emily--to judge whether he loved her or not. She asked herself whether his having escorted her to that house was in reality purely accidental, and she wished that she could have seen them together but for a few moments longer, though every moment had been a dagger to her heart. Nay, she did more: she strove by many a dexterous turn of the conversation, to lure out her fair unconscious guest's inmost thoughts--to induce her, not to tell all, for that she knew was hopeless, but to betray all. Emily, however, happily for herself, was unconscious; she knew not that there was any thing to betray. Fortunately, most fortunately, she knew not what was in her own breast; or perhaps I should say, knew not what it meant. Her answers were all simple, natural and true; and plain candor, as often happens, disappointed art.

Mrs. Hazleton retired for the night with the conviction that whatever might be Marlow's feelings towards Emily, Emily was not in love with Marlow; and that was something gained.

"No, no," she said, with a pride in her own discernment, "a woman who knows something of the world can never be long deceived in regard to another woman's heart." She should have added, "except by its simplicity."

"Now," she continued, mentally, "to-morrow for the first great stop. If this youth can but demean himself wisely, and will follow the advice I have given him, he has a fair field to act in. He seems prompt and ready enough: he is assuredly handsome, and what between his good looks, kind persuasion by others, and her father's dangerous position, this girl methinks may be easily driven--or led into his arms; and that stumbling-block removed. He will punish her enough hereafter, or I am mistaken."

Punish her for what, Mrs. Hazleton?

FOOTNOTES:

[M] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by G. P. R. James, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New-York.

THE FRIENDSHIP OF JOSEPHUS AND ST. PAUL.

In the _Princeton Review_, the _Church of England Quarterly_, and other periodicals, there have appeared recently several very interesting articles upon the Voyage of St. Paul to Rome; and in a work entitled "Gleanings on the Overland Route," by the author of "Forty Days in the Desert," just published in London, we find a dissertation "On the Shipwreck of the Apostle Paul, and the historian Josephus," which goes far to prove that Josephus accompanied the apostle to Rome, and that he was in some measure the means of procuring the introduction of the Christians into "Caesar's household." After a summary account of the shipwreck as narrated by St. Luke, aided by such elucidatory particulars as have been supplied by Mr. James Smith in his "Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul," the author says:--

"The only real difference between the two accounts of St. Luke and of Josephus is, that Josephus does not mention the stay of three months on the island of Malta. He writes as if the ship were wrecked in the open sea, and he was saved by being at once taken up into the second ship. This very great disagreement in the two narratives we must set to the account of Josephus's inaccuracy. The second ship he rightly calls a ship of Cyrene, for the Alexandrian vessel, in a favorable voyage, may have touched at that port. He adds to the apostolic history the interesting information, that it was through the Jewish actor, Alituries, that he, and, we may add, the Apostle and Christianity, gained an introduction into 'Caesar's household.' That Josephus sailed in the same ship with Paul, we may hold for certain. No Jews born in Judea had the privilege of Roman citizenship; of Jews who had that privilege, the number was so small, that it is not probable that two such appeals to Rome, by Jews from the province of Judea, should have been allowed in the reign of Nero. That two ships, carrying such Hebrew applicants from Judea, should have been wrecked in the Adriatic, from both of which the passengers should have been saved, and landed at Puteoli, and that within the space of three years, we may pronounce impossible. So then the Jewish historian Josephus, when a young man, made the voyage from Caesarea to Italy with the Apostle Paul, the Evangelist Luke, and their friend Aristarchus, and, for part of the way, with the young Titus. He calls the Apostle his friend, though worldly prudence forbade his naming him. From these fellow-travellers he must have heard the opinions of the Christians. He was able to contradict or confirm all that they said of the founder of our religion, for he was born only eight years after the crucifixion. But Josephus, when he wrote his history and life, was a courtier, and even a traitor to his country--he wanted moral courage, he did not mean to be a martyr, and any testimony in favor of a despised sect is not to be expected from him. The passage in his Antiquities in which Jesus is praised we may give up as a forgery of the third century: it is enough for us to remark, that after having lived for five months with Paul on the voyage from Judea to Italy, he does not write against this earnest teacher of Christianity, as either a weak enthusiast or a crafty impostor. But he praises his piety and virtues, and boasts that he was of use in obtaining his release from prison."

Mr. Smith, to whom allusion is made above, is said to be a gentleman of liberal fortune, and to have carefully studied navigation, and in numerous voyages in his yacht through these seas to have practised it, for the especial purpose of investigating and illustrating the points embraced in this interesting portion of the sacred history. He has pretty satisfactorily established the precise route of the Apostle on this famous journey, which is the most universally familiar of all in ancient or modern life. The curious suggestion of such personal relations between Paul and Josephus is not new; it was made some time in the seventh century in the Reflections of Bernardin Pastouret, and perhaps at an earlier time by others. The author whose words are here quoted, is Mr. John Sharpe, and he has very clearly presented the case.

THE COUNT MONTE-LEONE: OR, THE SPY IN SOCIETY.[N]

Translated For The International Monthly Magazine From the French of H. De St. Georges.

_Continued from page 359._

## BOOK IV.

I. EXPLANATION OF THE ENIGMA.

While the events we have described are taking place at Sorrento, we will retrace our steps to the Etruscan House, where we left Monte-Leone and Taddeo when the latter placed in the hands of the former the letter of La Felina. The Count opened the letter, and read:

"Taddeo--You told me in the prison of the palace of the Dukes of Palma, whither I went to find you, '_Love which speculates is not love. Mine will obey you for obedience' sake. Try, however, to ask something grand and difficult, that you may judge it by its fruits._'"

"Then you love her?" said Monte-Leone, interrupting himself.

"Read on," said Taddeo.

"'Your heart, Taddeo, is noble,' replied I. 'I have faith in it. May God grant that your strength do not betray your courage. In four days you will learn what I expect from you.' I write down what I expect, for I have not courage to tell you. I cannot crush your hopes, though I know that they cannot be realized. The feelings you have avowed to me, Taddeo, demand entire confidence: for it would be a crime to deceive a heart like yours. I will therefore tell you the truth, painful as it may be. It is a year since I came to Naples, having been attracted thither by a brilliant engagement at San Carlo. My success was as great as it had been in the other capitals of Italy. After the applause and ovations of the public--the truest and most discriminating of all--came privileged admirers; those, who, from their rank, birth, and fortune, have a right to pass the curtain of the sanctuary, and cast incense at the very foot of the idol; who can compliment the artiste on the stage, and follow her with their commonplaces to her very box. There was no scarcity of sacrificers. The noblest of Naples overwhelmed me with adulations; from compliments they came to declaration, and there, as at Rome, Venice, and elsewhere, I was persecuted by the insipid gallantries of suitors, to which every successful artiste possessed of any personal attraction must submit. To all these advances my heart remained cold, and my insensibility cost me nothing; for I neither loved nor wished to. A strange event, however, changed my plans. It was an evening of last autumn, and the air was as sultry as possible. Exhausted by the heat of the theatre, after the performance was over I sent my carriage home, and resolved, in company with my _confidante_, to return on foot. I avoided my many suitors, and escaped from the theatre by a back-door. The air was so pure, and the night so beautiful, that I walked for some time on the _chiaja_. It was late when I returned homeward. Crossing an isolated street, which I had taken to shorten the walk, my _confidante_ and myself were unexpectedly attacked by a party of men who stood beneath the portico of a palace. They had well-nigh stifled our cries with scarfs, which had been thrown over our heads, and we should possibly have been murdered, when a man, rushing sword in hand, I know not whence, attacked our aggressors, disarmed three of them, whom he put to flight, and killed the fourth by a dagger-thrust. Rapidly as possible, he then took off the bandages from our faces, and gave me, half dead with terror, his arm.

"A carriage passed, the stranger called to it, placed us in it, and said: 'A lady, signora, of your appearance, met in the streets of Naples at such an hour, doubtless is under the influence of some secret motive she would be unwilling to expose. My services to you have been too slight to warrant my questioning you. Now you have nothing to fear, and this carriage will take you any where you please. I will inquire into no orders which you may give.' 'But your name, signore?' said I. 'Count Monte-Leone,' said he, as he disappeared."

"That is true," said the Count. "I never knew, though, whom I had rescued from the hands of bandits."

He then began again to read:

"From that time the Count was, in spite of myself, the object of my constant thoughts and secret meditations. I was very anxious, at least, to know the features of the man, whom I had only seen in the dark; for the services he had rendered me, the courage he had displayed, even the sound of his voice, spoke both to my head and heart. One day, as I was crossing the street of Toledo, some young persons pointed out to me a cavalier, mounted on a noble horse. 'No one but Monte-Leone can ride such an animal as that. No one else rides so well.' 'He is the handsomest and most brilliant of our young nobles,' said another. 'What a pity he gives himself so completely to the people,' said a third. The Count, whom I saw then for the first time, was the realization of all my youthful dreams and illusions. I loved the Count, though I did not know it. From the moment I saw him, my heart and soul were consecrated to him."

A painful sigh, uttered near Monte-Leone, made the Count look at young Rovero, the pallor of whom indicated intense suffering.

"My friend," said the Count, taking his hand, "what matters it if Felina love me, provided I do not love her?"

"Some day you may love her," said Taddeo.

"No," said the Count.

"And why?"

"Because I have but one heart, and that is another's."

A happy smile lighted up the face of Rovero, and Monte-Leone continued to read, with as much _sang-froid_ as if another were the subject of the letter:

"You wished to know which of the four I loved; excuse me, Taddeo, but now I have told you all. From that time I conceived an ardent devotion to Monte-Leone. My passion was, however, of that kind which only demands the gratification of the soul. All I had heard of the Count's character, of his errors, follies, and numerous passions, far from alienating, rendered him still dearer to me. It seemed that his lofty, generous disposition, full of courage and honor, had wanted nothing but a guide, or rather an angel, to wrest him from the torment of the life he had prepared for himself."

The Count paused, and reflected for a few moments, which seemed centuries to Rovero. He then began again to read:

"Ah, had I met Monte-Leone in the days of my innocence, in the days when I also looked for some one to guide my early steps, with my hand in his, with my heart beating against his, I should, perhaps, have avoided the rocks on which I have been wrecked? To the Count, however, I could be now but an ordinary woman, whose attractions might, perhaps, for the moment fascinate him, but whom he would soon cast aside, as he has his other conquests: then I feel _I should have killed him!_"

The Count quietly read on:

"I loved him too fondly to become his mistress; yet his image pursued me by night and day. At last my heart, in its immense and pure love, inspired me with the noblest and purest idea: 'Be more than a woman, be more than a mistress to him,' said I to myself, 'be a providence, a secret and protecting providence which preserves him in all dangers, and provides all his happiness.' Alas! I fancied that I had to defend Monte-Leone only against the ordinary perils of life, against the rivalry excited by his triumphs, and not against the serious dangers to which his opinions subjected him. I soon heard the rumors which were being circulated about the Count, learned of his danger, and the perilous part he had to play in relation to the secret societies. I learned all this from public rumor, but I needed other aid and information to guide me in the defence of him I loved. Among those most carried away by my talent, and if I must say so, most captivated by my beauty, was the Duke of Palma, minister of police. I received the minister kindly, and without yielding to his persuasions, conferred trifling favors on him. His confidence in me was immense. When I was stern to him he became desperate, but he professed there was such a charm in my company that he sought constantly to see me. Minister as he was, he became not my _sicisbeo_, for that I would consent to at no price, but my _cavaliero sirviente_, thus occupying the second grand hierarchy of love. I learned from the minister himself the snares prepared for Monte-Leone, twenty times I informed your friend of them, and enabled him to avoid them. In the same manner I heard of your imprudent folly at the ball of San-Carlo, and you know what I did to avert its consequences. A certain Lippiani, a skilful officer placed by means of my influence in the Neapolitan police, while paying a visit of inspection to the jailor of the Castle _Del Uovo_, contrived to introduce into the prisoner's loaf the mysterious information he received. The imagination, or rather the genius of the Count, inspired him with a design to secure his liberty. To assure the success of this ruse, the Count escaped for some hours from his prison, and amid that season of trouble, energy, and anguish, Monte-Leone lost the famous ring he always wears. This loss again placed his life and liberty in danger. Then I conceived a hardy and bold plan, which cannot succeed without your aid and devotion. On that, however, for you so promised me, I rely. I learned that you were a prisoner, but were about to be released. You can then aid me, but it is necessary to awake no suspicion. Aware of every outlet to the palace, which had often been shown to me by the Duke of Palma, I remembered a certain secret passage and door hidden in a pillar, whither the Duke often comes, to hear, unseen, the examinations of prisoners. Thither I sought to come. The porter admitted me at night; doubtless, fancying I was come to keep an appointment with his master. Of what value, however, were honor and reputation to me compared with his danger. Now, Taddeo, read with attention the lines I am about to write; follow my advice exactly, or Monte-Leone is lost.

"I obtained possession for a few days of the emerald lost by the Count, and which had been sent by his enemies to the Duke of Palma. At a great cost I caused a similar one to be made by one of the most skilful workmen of Naples. The copy will be easily recognized: _that is what I wish_. I have substituted it for the original, and placed it myself in the minister's jewel case, the key of which he had given to me to take an antique _cameo_, the design of which I wished. The false ring will be given to the Count, instead of the true one, which is in the _coffret_ I have placed by you. Go to Monte-Leone's house, during the night after your release. I am too closely watched now, to dare go thither myself. Give this ring to the old servant, tell him to deliver it to the judges, but not till the trial. The enemies of whom I spoke will be overcome by this pretended proof of their imposition, and the safety of the Count will be sure. I have told you all. Now, Taddeo, excuse me for having pained you by my disclosure. Excuse me for having unfolded all my heart to you, excuse me for having permitted you to read my most secret sentiments. Your love deserves something better than mine; but if it inspire you with any pity for me, rescue the Count from the executioner, and know that to save Monte-Leone is to save La Felina."

"What a woman!" said the Count, as he let fall the letter; "what passion and devotion!"

"Ah!" said Taddeo, who looked anxiously into the eyes of the Count, to divine the effect produced by the singer's letter, "you see her devotion pleases and touches you:--that you love her----"

"Taddeo," said the Count, with great emotion, "that woman was my providence, and defended me against my accusers.... She saved my life.... It is a noble heart that thus hopelessly devotes itself. Let me give her all my gratitude.... A poor and sterile recompense for such devotion. The other sentiments of my heart you shall also know!"

Rising up with the dignified and lofty air of a noble, he said:

"Taddeo Rovero, Count Monte-Leone asks of you the hand of Aminta Rovero, your sister."

Just then a painful exclamation was heard in the next room. Monte-Leone seized his dagger and rushed to the door. He threw it open, and a strange spectacle presented itself to him. A woman, pale and trembling, leaned on the arm of an old man. Her eyes, fixed and tearful, seemed to look without seeing, and her ears appeared to catch no sound. It was La Felina. She was sustained by old Giacomo.

"Excuse me, Monsignore, she was permitted to come in; for Signor Rovero, when he brought your ring, said you owed your safety to her."

"Felina!" said Taddeo. He fell at the singer's feet.

She remained motionless as a statue whose lips only were living.

"Signore Monte-Leone," said she, "I leave Naples to-night, and for ever. Before I did so, however, I wished to see and give you a piece of advice. Death menaces you from all sides, and your most insignificant

## actions are observed. Escape from the country, for here you will no

longer find the faithful friends who have watched over you."

"Say, Signora, the _faithful friend_, the generous providence who saved me from the axe of the executioner."

"You know all, Signor," said La Felina; and she looked at Taddeo--"my secret has been revealed to you--for blushing, however, I now acknowledge with pride that it is true, for it has won for me the expressions you uttered just now. Alas!" said she bitterly, "I should have fled and have heard no more."

Tears filled her eyes; overcoming her emotion, however, she said:

"My mission is fulfilled, Count Monte-Leone, for you will live and be happy. If misfortune, though, befall you, do not forget that one heart in the world will taste of all your sorrow.--Taddeo," said she, giving the young man her hand, "time and reason will exert their influence on so noble a heart, and ere long you will find one worthy of you. Forget me," she added, when she saw him about to reply, "do not speak to me of sentiments the intensity of which I know--and I will assist you to triumph. To-morrow you will love me less. I know so. To-morrow."

"To-morrow!" said Taddeo.

"Yes," said Felina, "and in a little time I shall be but the shadow of a dream, which some reality will expel from your heart."

She went towards the door.

"Signori," said she, when she saw Monte-Leone and Taddeo preparing to follow her, "I came hither with confidence in the honor of two gentlemen, who, I am sure, will not leave the room until I shall have left. Do not be afraid," she continued, with a faint smile on her lips, "a carriage awaits, but not to convey me to the Castle _Del Uovo_."

Then casting on the Count a glance instinct with sadness and regret, she offered her hand to Taddeo, who covered it with kisses, and preceded by Giacomo left the room. For some moments the two friends looked at each other in silence. Taddeo then went towards the door, saying:

"But I am a fool to let her escape thus."

He crossed the court and went to the door of the room. The carriage, however, was gone, and far in the distance he heard the sound of the wheels.

II.--A LAST APPEARANCE.

The hearts of Monte-Leone and of Taddeo Rovero were, after the departure of the singer, in very different conditions. Monte-Leone, delighted with the present, and with the prospect of future success, to be attained as the husband of Aminta, forgot all else--even the terrible responsibility which weighed on him as the chief of a faction of forbidden societies, and the perpetual dangers with which it menaced him. Monte-Leone had an energetic heart but a volatile mind, over which the accidents of life glide like the runner of a sleigh over polished ice, almost without leaving traces.

A circumstance of which we will speak of by and by, aroused the Count from his peace of soul to cast him in the waves of that sea of politics where shipwrecks are so common and tempests so usual. The only idea which occupied Taddeo was to see La Felina again. He said rightly enough that the rays of such a star could not long be concealed; that its glory and success would always betray it, and that the farewell token of Monte-Leone in the Etruscan house would not be for ever.

Under the influence, then, of very different sentiments, the two friends returned to the Count's hotel at Naples. Less beautiful than the magnificent palace of Monte-Leone, it did not, like the latter, render indispensable the numerous and imposing array of servants, of which his somewhat restricted fortune deprived Monte-Leone. Descried by its master during the whole time of his seclusion, this hotel had been the scene of the ruinous pleasures of the Count. Splendid festivals had been given there; joyous suppers had been proposed, and the shadow of more than one graceful dame, wrapped in silken folds, had been traced at midnight on the great white marble wall of the portico.

Giacomo, who had left the Etruscan house at an early hour, had superintended the preparation of the hotel for its master, and the unfolding of the tall wide windows made the house seem to stare on the sunlight, like blind persons who but recently have recovered their sight. The resuscitation of the hotel of Monte-Leone, as people in the Toledo-street said, created a great sensation in that quarter. The Count and Taddeo had been there but a short time, when Giacomo, evidently in a very bad humor, announced Signor Pignana. Many of the Count's friends who had heard of his return came to see him and crowded around him. They arose to leave when the new-comer was announced; but they paused when they saw the strange person introduced.

"_Buon giorno caro mio Pignana_,"[O] said the Count, advancing to meet him. "You are not the last to visit me, and I am deeply touched by your visit. He is my landlord, Signori, an excellent man. Something of an Arab, it is true, in money matters; but as he is an old tradesman, you see it is impossible for him to change his habits. For twenty years he furnished the family liveries, and the result is that now he is richer than me."

"Ah, my Lord," said Pignana, "you flatter me."

"Not at all, Signor," said Monte-Leone. "Now you can yourself have liveries with the Pignana arms, '_Two winged shears on a field argent_,' a regular tailor's escutcheon."

"How then," asked one of the young men, "is Signor Pignana your landlord--is it of this hotel or of your beautiful palace?"

"Ah," said the Count, "he is not exactly my landlord yet, but he will be if my friend and creditor, Signor Pignana, continues to lend me money at cent. per cent. At present, however, the excellent man only owns my Etruscan house, a very gem of a thing, which he rents to me, and for which I am much obliged."

"It is I who am obliged," muttered Pignana.

"Ah!" said the Count, with a smile, "I believe you. That house had nearly become historical. If the executioner of Naples, the father of a family, and passionately fond of flowers," continued the Count to his friends, "with whom I passed a fortnight at the Castle _Del Uovo_, had been forced to arrange matters for me, the house in which Monte-Leone was arrested would have become historical. Pignana could have let it out to tourists, and could have retailed the stores for the London museums. Instead of this piece of good fortune, which I am very glad was not Pignana's, he possesses a good tenant, who will some day pay him punctually, when he has himself been paid all that is due him; for you can fancy how the arrest of one man discourages the business of others. All his debtors, all the friends of his purse, leap with joy; he seems at once outlawed, especially to those who are indebted to him. The most honest merely pray that his imprisonment may be prolonged; the least delicate pray that the executioner may send them a receipt."

"But the Count also has some true friends who would be distressed at his death," said Pignana. "Monsignore counts me among them."

Pignana probably uttered these words under the influence of great emotion, for a tear hung on the lid of his eye above an aquiline nose of immense size.

"My dear Pignana," said the Count, "I know how far I can depend on you, for _I know you_."

Monte-Leone accented this word, the significance of which to Pignana was very expressive, for he looked proudly around, as if the Count had given him a certificate of valor and courage.

"I am about to give you the list of our men--that is to say of our transactions,"[P] said the old man, eagerly correcting himself.

"Yes," said Monte-Leone, who had glanced sternly at him, "the list of our transactions. Go on, Pignana, go on, prove your account and diminish the total, contrary to your wont; above all, exhibit your vouchers; that is especially important."

"Do not trouble yourself, Monsignore: I have all regular, and now you must pay in person."

"In person," replied the Count. "Yes, Pignana, I will thus discharge my obligations without having recourse to a third party. Go thither, however, at once," said he, and he pushed the tailor into the next room. "You will find writing materials," he added, aside, "and no one to listen to you."

"Excuse me, Signori," said he, speaking to his friends; "you have seen one of the greatest misfortunes of our rank, the necessity of civility to a fool who is a creditor."

Just then Taddeo Rovero, who had gone out when Pignana entered, came in, introducing a handsome lad of about eighteen.

"Count," said he, to Monte-Leone, "let me introduce you to Signor Gaetano Brignoli, a friend of my family."

"Then, Signor," said the Count, "you are a friend of mine; for all whom they love are dear to me."

"Ah! Count," said Gaetano, "how much uneasiness your trial has caused all at Sorrento! Especially to myself, who was particularly charged by the charming Aminta to inform her of all the details of the trial. I set out on the night before your trial to be one of the first in the hall."

"I scarcely dare," said the Count, with an expression of great pleasure, "to think the Signorina entertains such interest in my behalf."

"It was not precisely of yourself that she spoke," replied Gaetano, "but of my friend Taddeo, her brother, who was known to be compromised with you, and about whom she, naturally enough, was interested."

The Count grew slightly pale as he saw this gratification wrested from him.

"By-the-by, Signori," said Gaetano, "you have heard the news with which all the city and suburbs echo, and which makes almost as much noise as the trial of the Count Monte-Leone."

"I trust," said the Count, bitterly, "that the news is more pleasant."

"Infinitely more so," continued Gaetano. "Every one is talking of it, and crazed with it--especially myself, who am a _pazzo per la musica_, like the here of Fioravanti. You know, Signori, nothing is more pleasant than to win again a pleasure we fancy to have been lost to us."

"Go on," said Taddeo, who had a presentiment that something pleasant was about to be related. The very mention of music made him quiver.

"Well, Signori," said Gaetano, "the Sicilian siren, the fairy _La Felina_, sings to-night at San Carlo."

"La Felina?" said all the listeners at once.

"La Felina! impossible!" said Rovero. "She left Naples last night."

"Certainly she did," said Gaetano; "and that makes the matter more charming and pleasant. _La Felina_ has her caprices as all pretty women, and singers especially. That is the condition and very qualification of talent. A _prima donna_ who did not keep the public uneasy about her health, her business, or her amours, one who did not outrage the manager, would not be a complete woman. How could she? One does not earn a hundred thousand francs a year for acting as if the salary was only a thousand crowns. It would be vulgar and common and altogether unbecoming a fine lady. La Felina, therefore, annoyed by the effect produced on the public mind by the drama of the Trial of Count Monte-Leone, which occupied the attention she thought should be engrossed by her own performances, would not appear while the trial was going on. She was about to throw up her engagement, and actually did so, when she was at the Porta-Capuana. The patrons of the opera, with the empresario at their head, accompanied by the orchestra and troupe, not wanting an enormous crowd of other admirers of _la Diva_, and they are many, prevented the carriage from passing. She was surrounded, pressed, and besought to such a degree that she was dragged back to her hotel, and promised to sing once more in the Griselda of the _Maestro Paer_, the best of all her characters. You can fancy the enthusiasm thus excited, and how all struggle to secure seats. I paid for mine thrice the usual price, and think I am very fortunate."

For a moment Taddeo said nothing, he saw nothing, and scarcely breathed. He was half stifled with joy and surprise. To see one again, from whom he had expected to be separated for so long a time, and perhaps for ever, seemed to him a dream from which he seemed afraid to awake. The friends of the Count left: all hurried to the theatre to secure an opportunity of being present at the solemnity.

"Come, come," said Taddeo, hurrying young Brignoli away. "I must go to San Carlo to-night at any price, even at that of my life!"

"Indeed!" said Gaetano, "I did not think you so passionate a dilettante. You exceed me--to pay for music with gold is well enough, but with life--ah, that is altogether a different thing; mine is valuable, and I keep it for greater occasions."

The Count stopped Rovero just as he was about to leave.

"What," said he, with an air of deep concern, "will you not go with me to-morrow to Sorrento?"

"To-morrow, to-morrow, for pity's sake," said Taddeo in a low tone. "Let me be happy to-day, and I will devote all my life to you."

He left with Gaetano.

"No, no," said Monte-Leone, "I will not wait a day, not an hour, before I see Aminta,--even if I go to Sorrento alone. I will go thither at once."

"Impossible," said a grave voice behind the Count.

The latter turned around and saw Pignana, who had glided unseen from the room as soon as he heard the young people leave.

"Why so?" said the Count.

"Why, Monsignore?" replied Pignana, who, casting aside the air and manner of a retired tradesman, became a dry and cold old man with a dignified bearing. "Because our brothers, terrified at your arrest, were on the point of dissolving the _vente_.--Because, it has been reported that your excellency was on the point of abandoning the cause, and laying aside the functions of supreme chief:--Because, the principal _Carbonari_, the agent of whom I am, wish to be informed of your intentions, and to be assured by you personally that you will not abandon them."

"Then," said the Count, with a gesture of ill-restrained temper, for these political embarrassments came in conflict with ideas which were far dearer to him, "that is the meaning of what you said just now. How can I restore confidence to our associates? The Neapolitan police watches over me; the least imprudence, the slightest exhibition of the existence of our association, would revive all, and endanger the fate and future success of the society, and also my life. You have few men of energy among you; you, who are one of the most devoted, trembled _in the presence of my friends_. You deserve to be hissed like a bad actor in a good part! Listen to me, Pignana: I wish to be your chief; I wish to risk a heavy stake in your cause; but now, especially when heavy matters weigh on me, I do not purpose to appear in _political comedy_. I wish to play a serious part, the theories of which are actions, with many deeds and few words. I will do all that is necessary to serve our cause, but nothing more. Remember this. The Castle _Del Uovo_, dungeons beneath the sea, the executioner and conversations with the Grand-Judge, warn me to be careful and prudent. Ask me, then, nothing more. In eight days our great general _venta_ will be held at the monastery of San Paola, fifty leagues from Naples. I will be there, and will tell you what our brethren in France and Germany have informed me of. Until then, however, question me about nothing."

"We do not, Monsignore," replied Pignana, who was aware of the firmness of the Count, and saw at once that he had mistaken his course. "The association, which admires your excellency, especially since the trial, which looks on your excellency as a martyr, asks nothing except one favor, which will overwhelm it with gratitude and joy."

"And what is that favor?" rejoined the Count.

"That Monsignore will appear to-night at San Carlo in a box, the key of which I have with me. This box may be seen from every part of the house. All of our principal men will be present, and if Monsignore will advance, during the interlude, to the front of the box, _placing his hand on his heart_, all our friends will know that they may rely on him."

"By my faith, shrewd as the Duke of Palma is, suspicious as the police may be, I do not think this can be construed into an act of treason. It pledges me to nothing. The ladies to whom we make the gesture understand it. I will then make this exhibition of my person, as the English say, and I will increase the interest of the performance by my presence. In a word, I will appear for the benefit of La Felina. The brave girl and myself will not even then be quits."

"Thank you, Count," said Pignana, as he left--"and now, adieu, until we meet at San Carlo."

* * * * *

A few hours after the scene we have described, an immense crowd thronged every entry to the theatre of San Carlo. It was not, however, the joyous crowd intoxicated with folly which we have seen hurry into its precincts at the commencement of this story. On this occasion the public seemed rather busy than in search of pleasure. It was a matter of importance, indeed, to be present at the last appearance of La Felina. The keys of the boxes, therefore, according to the Italian custom, were sold at the door of the theatre, and at double the usual price. I speak only of the small number of boxes, the proprietors of which were absent from Naples. We may also as well add, that in Naples a box is often _property_. All the other boxes were occupied by illustrious personages, or by the wealthiest inhabitants of the great city. San Carlo on that night was brilliant as possible. The Count had just come. The women glittered with flowers and diamonds. As on the occasion of the masked ball, the theatre was illuminated _a giorno_. No detail of the festival, no beauty present could escape observation. Count Monte-Leone appeared in the box which had been reserved for him, which soon became the object of every lorgnette and the theme of every conversation. He bore this annoying attention with icy _sang-froid_, seeming even not to observe it. His vanity, however, was secretly gratified, and we have said that this was his weak point. The overture began, and the curtain was finally raised. During this time, and the first scenes of the opera, the private conversation was so loud and animated that the singers and orchestra were almost overpowered. Suddenly silence was restored--admiration as respectful as that which precedes a sovereign's arrival pervaded all.

The true Queen of Naples, at this moment, was La Felina. This complete calmness was soon succeeded by a thunder of applause. A thousand voices uttered a long shout of commingled bravos and hurras. La Felina was on the stage. This delirium produced by a single person, this passionate worship expressed by an almost furious admiration, those thousand hearts hung to the lips of a single person, is found only on the stage, and was one of the triumphs which Naples decreed to the greatest artist in Italy. A report was in circulation, also, which added to this almost furious admiration. It was said, that she was about to retire for ever, and that this was her last appearance. The eyes of love have a secret and admirable instinct, enabling them to see what persons who are indifferent cannot discover. Among this eager and compact crowd, the glances of La Felina were immediately attracted to a point of the hall, to a single box in which Monte-Leone sat. To him Felina acted and sang, and she was sublime. At the moment when Paer's heroine appeared, a single voice was heard above all others, and the person who had uttered it, having exhausted all the powers of his soul, during the whole time Felina was on the stage, stood with his eyes fixed on her, as if he had been fascinated by some charm he could not shake off.

"Poor Taddeo," said the Count, when he saw him, "why does she not love him?"

The first act was concluded by a torrent of bouquets, which the audience threw at the feet of their favorite actress. The curtain fell. This was the moment expected by the associate of Monte-Leone. Faithful to his promise, the Count leaned forward in his box, naturally as possible, and looked around the brilliant assembly. He then placed his hand on his heart, and disappeared in the recess of his box. Before, however, he left, he heard a confused and joyous murmur, which rose from the parquet to the boxes, and became lost in the arch of the gilded ceiling.

"_They were there_," said Monte-Leone, "and Pignana must be satisfied. I have done all he asked literally."

A few friends joined the Count in his box.

"Indeed, dear Monte-Leone," said one of these, with whom he was most intimate, a friend of his childhood, "You have resumed your old habits."

"What do you mean?"

"That, scarcely out of prison, I saw you from my box beginning a new intrigue by exchanging signs with some fair unknown. This, too, at San Carlo. This is bold, indeed, unless the hand on your heart is the resumption of an old intrigue, interrupted, perhaps, by your imprisonment."

"I do not understand you, Barberini," said the Count, not a little annoyed. "I made no sign to any one."

"Perhaps so: if you please, I was mistaken. But if I am, it is all the better; for it proves to me that you no longer adhere to the plans you once confided to me. I was delighted, too, at what I heard yesterday evening."

"Of what plans do you speak?" replied the Count, moved, in spite of himself, by this half-confidence.

"Mon Dieu! of your own. Did you not tell me that you were passionately fond of the sister of Taddeo de Sorrento, of the beautiful Aminta Rovero, daughter of the old minister of finances of Murat?"

"True," said the Count.

"Well," continued Barberini, "I hope you are cured of that love, for you have a rival."

"A rival!" said the Count.

"Yes, and perhaps a happy one."

"Signor," said Monte-Leone, restraining himself with difficulty, "let me tell you I purpose to make that lady my wife. All that touches her honor, touches mine also."

"I say nothing derogatory to it, but merely repeat what I have heard."

"What have you heard?" said Monte-Leone, and the blood rushed to his head.

"One of my young relations," continued Count Barberini, "was at an entertainment given on the recurrence of her daughter's birthday by Signora Rovero. He spoke to me of a Frenchman who is with them, and who seems passionately fond of the young Aminta."

"And then?" said Monte-Leone, with the same tone in which he would have asked the executioner to strike him with certainty.

"And then! why that is all," said Barberini, who had become terrified at Monte-Leone's manner. "I heard nothing more.... If I did, I would take care to be silent when you look so furiously. All this interests me very slightly. One's own love affairs are too troublesome to enable us to occupy ourselves with those of others.... There, too, is the Countess d'Oliviero, waving her bouquet so impatiently to and fro that I see she will break it to pieces unless I go. I must leave you, to save her flowers." The young man left.

"I was right," said he, "not to tell the story of the night affair of which my kinsman was a witness. I think he would have killed me at once."

III. A PATERNAL LETTER

On the day after the terrible night during which Aminta had strayed in her sleep to the room of Maulear, two ladies met at about nine in the morning in the saloon of the villa of Sorrento, and were locked in each other's arms.

"Yes, my child," said one of them, "your sleep has given an interpretation to all that has passed, and I understand all. Your honor cannot suffer, for you are chaste and pure."

"In your eyes, dear mother, I am; but in those of the world, which they tell me is so envious and malicious! Even last night, when every eye was fixed on me, I fancied that I read suspicion and contempt in the expression of more than one."

"No, my child," replied Signora Rovero, clasping her to her heart, "I saw almost all our guests this morning, immediately before they left. They had already heard of your somnambulism, and our servants had told how you suffered with it from your childhood. All are convinced of your innocence."

"Dear mother, do not think so. They spoke to you only with their lips, but believe me guilty."

"Mother," added she, with that strange emotion to which she was sometimes a victim, "I think that this unfortunate affair is but the beginning of the realization of the unfortunate fate which I know is reserved for me. It seems to me that on yesterday our evil days began."

She hid her head in her mother's bosom to conceal her tears, and to find a refuge against the misfortunes she feared.

A servant came in, and said, "The Marquis de Maulear wishes to wait on the ladies."

"Mother, mother," said Aminta, "how can I refrain from blushing before him?"

Signora Rovero bade the servant show the Marquis in. Then arranging Aminta's beautiful hair, she kissed her forehead, and said:

"Daughter, one never blushes in the presence of a husband."

Aminta, with great surprise, looked at her mother.

"Ah, ah!" said Madame Rovero, with a smile, "a parent's eyes see much."

Before Aminta had time to speak, the Marquis entered. He was pale and excited.

"Signora," said he to Aminta's mother, "I come to beg you to pardon me for a great fault."

"To what, Signor, do you refer?"

"Of the greatest of all faults, after the manner in which I have been received, and your kindness towards me--for not having confided in you, and said yesterday what I wish to say to-day. Yet only from you have I kept my secret. Yesterday, nothing obliged you to grant me the favor I am about to solicit: yesterday, you might have refused it. To-day, perhaps, it will be less difficult. A circumstance favorable only to myself," added he, with a timid glance at Aminta, "marks out my conduct, which assumes now the aspect of an obligation. It fulfils all my wishes, and makes me the happiest of men. In one word, signora, I come to beg that you will suffer me to become allied to your family."

"Marquis," said Signora Rovero, "I expected to hear you speak thus, for I was sure of your honor. But far from wishing that now for the first time you had informed my daughter of the sentiments with which she has inspired you, I rejoice that your course has been different. Without this motive, signor, neither my daughter nor I would accept the alliance you wish to offer us. _No reparation can be exacted, where no fault has been committed._ I wish to strengthen your conscience, by assuring you, that in my opinion nothing obliges you to the course you have adopted, if it interferes with your prospects and success."

The last expressions of Signora Rovero produced a deep sensation on Maulear, and a shadow of uneasiness passed over his brow. She had ignorantly touched a sensitive chord of the heart of the young lover. Led astray by his heart, seduced invincibly by charms which were so new to him, Maulear, under the influence of passion, had entered on the flowery route, at the end of which he caught a glimpse of happiness. In the delirium of passion, he had forgotten that a severe judge, that the imperious master of his destiny, that a father, with principles eminently aristocratic, like all fathers in 1768, awaited to absolve or acquit him, to receive or repel him, to unite or to sever--in one word, to make him happy or miserable. All these important ideas were at once evoked in the mind of Maulear by the last sentence Signora Rovero had uttered. It was this hidden and sombre apparition which arose between Maulear and her he loved, the sinister aspect of which was reflected in a manner by the expression of Aminta's lover.

Signorina Rovero perceived it, and with the acute discrimination she possessed to so high a degree, said, in the melodious tones which touched all who heard them:

"Marquis, my mother has spoken for her family, I will speak for myself. You have informed us of the noble family to which you belong. I know that your wife one day will be a princess, and I wish you to remember, that she, to whom you offer this title, is the daughter of 'a noble of yesterday;' the glory of whom is derived from her daughter's virtues. This, Marquis, I say not for you, but for others. Excuse me, too, for what you are about to hear. If I have need of courage to own it to you, perhaps you will require all your generosity to hearken to it." With a trembling voice she added: "As yet, I do not reciprocate the sentiments you have expressed. To the hope, though, which I permitted you to entertain yesterday, let me add, that I am additionally gratified by the offer of your hand; for in the eyes of many persons, signor, in the eyes of those who were witnesses of our presence together last night, you would not now marry her you were anxious to espouse yesterday.

"I shall marry an angel!" said Maulear, falling on his knees before Aminta, "an angel of candor and virtue. If your heart does not yet reciprocate the love you inspire, my care and tenderness will so delight you, that some day you will love me."

"Well, then," said she to Maulear, "grant me one favor. Suffer me to await that day. Take pity on a poor girl full of terror and apprehension, at a tie she has always feared. Grant her heart time to make itself worthy of you, Marquis, and remember that until then you are free. As my mother has told you, nothing binds you to me. Now you owe me nothing, nor will you, until I shall confide my destiny to your hands, when you will owe me the happiness you promise me."

"You do not consent? Then, Signorina, I will wait. Henceforth, however, I am pledged _to you_; and my hand and heart are yours."

Just then a servant told Maulear that a courier from Naples had brought him important letters. The Marquis bade adieu to the two ladies, and left.

"My child," said Signora Rovero, in a tone of affectionate reproach, "what must a man do to win your love?"

"I do not know; I am certainly foolish, but I am afraid!"

Maulear found the courier of the French embassy in his room. "An urgent letter from France," said he, to Maulear.

Henri read the direction and shuddered. It was from the Prince de Maulear. The Prince wrote rarely. What did he ask? The son who felt that he had acted incorrectly in disposing of his hand, without consulting the head of his family, trembled before he broke the seal. The character of Maulear was weak, as we have said, and, like people of this kind, the prospect of danger and misfortune annoyed him more than the reality itself. At last he resolved to know all, and with a trembling hand opened the letter. He read as follows:

"Paris, April 10, 1816.

"MY SON:--I often hear of you, not through your own letters, for you write rarely, but through other friends, whom I have requested to keep me _au fait_. I know what kind of life you lead at Naples, and am dissatisfied with you. The son of a shop-keeper and a banker would act more like a gentleman than you. People talk of you here no better than they do of the deputy of the hangman. I had hoped the Marquis de Maulear would behave more correctly in a foreign country. I was no older than you are, when I went as secretary of legation to Madrid. Three months afterwards I was recalled. I had run away with three women, fought four duels, and lost at cards fifty thousand crowns. That was something to be recalled for. It was an assurance that in future I would be reasonable. When our youth reasons, and does not laugh, things go wrong. The King spoke to me yesterday about you. He asked me, if you found any thing to amuse you at Naples. I replied that you found too much to amuse you. 'I am glad of it,' said the King, 'so our family honor at least is saved.' Since, however, you are most ignobly virtuous, I have tried to turn the affair to the best advantage. I have brought about a magnificent match for you, to supersede one I have heard you were making for yourself. The lady is rich, noble, and beautiful. She is the daughter of the Duke d'Harcourt, one of the gentlemen in waiting of his majesty. You may, perhaps, at Naples have seen Rene d'Harcourt, the brother of the lady. The marriage will take place three months hence. I trust I have surprised you not unpleasantly. Adieu, my son. Your aunt, the Countess, sends her love to you, and amuses herself with the preparation of your _corbeille_.

"LE PRINCE DE MAULEAR.

"P.S. You have three months' more folly before you, and for the rest of your life you must be prudent. I have opened a credit of one hundred thousand livres in your favor, with the banker Antonio Lamberti."

The letter fell from the hands of the Marquis, and he sank on his chair completely overwhelmed. Like a thunder-bolt, it aroused him from a happy dream. There are, in fact, in all love matters, certain moments of intoxication, when men, ordinarily sensible, become blunderers. For a month the Marquis had been in this condition, half reasonable, half mad. Living with one thought prominent, all others were indistinct to him. To him love was every thing. His father, with his antiquated obstinacy, imbued with retrograde principles, disappeared like a ghost before the brilliant reality of passion. Besides, fear of a rival, dread of the brilliant Count Monte-Leone, who, full of love, as Henri had heard, aspired to nothing more than to become the husband of Aminta left him no other alternative, than to do what another was about to--make an offering of his hand and faith. Lovers, too, see nothing but the object of their passion; and Henri sometimes thought his father would agree with him. The strange epistle of the Prince had however reversed all his dreams. The anger of the Prince when he should learn that a marriage had been contracted, contrary to his wishes, and in spite of his orders, might possibly exert a terrible influence on the fortune and future fate of the young couple; without regarding the chagrin and humiliation to which he would subject Aminta by bringing her into a family without the consent of its head.

Maulear passed three days in this cruel perplexity, sometimes hoping and then fearing that Aminta would yield to his prayer. His heart wished. His mind feared. If Signorina Rovero should accept his hand, it would be necessary for him to decide, to act; and then, from the weakness of his character, Maulear would be subjected to cruel uncertainty.

A few days after the scene which had occurred in his room, Maulear and the ladies sat together in a boudoir near the _salon_, which opened on the park, a view of which Aminta was taking. The Marquis had been reading to the ladies the trial of Count Monte-Leone from the _Diario di Napoli_. This curious story, full of surprises, the noble energy, the wonderful _sang-froid_ of the Count, the remarks of the journalist on the character of the prisoner, and the unjust accusation to which he had been subjected, and which he had so completely refuted, and to which he had submitted with such nobleness and heroism, all was listened to with the greatest interest. Maulear had read all this much to his own dissatisfaction, because Signora Rovero had requested it. The praises of Monte-Leone were most unpleasant to him.

Aminta heard every word. Every detail of the Count's daring, every change of character in this judicial drama, awakened an inexplicable emotion in her. It seemed that Count Monte-Leone, to whose singular story she had listened, was a far different man from the one she had imagined him to be. His powerful mind, his exalted soul, all the powers of which had been developed by the trial, conferred on Monte-Leone new proportions hitherto not realized by her. Count Monte-Leone, whom she had seen at home, almost timid in the presence of her he adored, annoyed by his false position as a refugee, suffering from a passion he dared not own, was not the person of whom she had heard for the past month. Looking down on her drawing, which her increasing absence of mind made almost invisible to her, Aminta sought to recall the features of the Count which had been nearly effaced from her memory. Gradually, however, they arose before her. Had her mother then spoken, had her glances been diverted from the album on which they were fixed, a strange trouble and confusion would have been visible, when aroused from this meditation. The sound of wheels entering the court yard of the villa broke the charm which entranced Aminta, and made Signora Rovero utter a cry of joy.

"It is he," cried she. "It is he who returns, my son Taddeo. Daughter, let us hurry to meet him. Let us be the first to embrace him."

Accompanied by Maulear, the two ladies hurried into the vestibule, which they crossed, standing at the villa-door just as the carriage stopped. A man left it and bowed respectfully to Signora Rovero and her daughter. This man was MONTE-LEONE.

IV.--TWO RIVALS.

Much had passed since Count Barberini had told Monte-Leone of the love of Maulear for Aminta Rovero. Monte-Leone felt all the furies of hell glide into his heart at this revelation. The idea that Aminta could love any one had never entered his mind. Whether from confidence in her, or from that error so common to lovers that they are entitled to love because they love themselves, Monte-Leone flattered himself that he had left a pleasant recollection in Aminta's mind. We may therefore imagine how painfully the Count was disturbed by the half-confidence of Barberini. Yet Taddeo, his friend, whom, he loved as a brother, could not have deceived him, and have concealed what had taken place at Sorrento, when he had received so cordially the hand of his sister. Taddeo, then, was ignorant of it. Monte-Leone, a prey to a thousand thoughts, left his box, forgetful of the opera, his friends and companions, with but one object and wish. He was determined to see Taddeo, to question him and find out who was the rival that menaced his happiness, and whom Aminta probably loved. The Count went to that part of the theatre in which he had seen Aminta. The second act, however, was about to begin; and the efforts of Monte-Leone to get near his friend created such murmurs, complaints, and anger, that he was obliged to wait for a more favorable opportunity. La Griselda was singing the _andante_ of her cavatina, and the artist's magnificent, powerful, and tender voice, echoing through the vastness of the hall, fell in pearly notes like a shower of diamonds on the ears of the spectators. After the _andante_ came the _caballeta_, and then the _coda-finale_. For a while one might have thought the four thousand spectators had but one breath, and were animated by a single heart, that they restrained the first to prevent the pulsations of the other from being disturbed. This gem of the opera was at last concluded, and mad applause rose from every part of the room. We are constrained, however, to say, that from this time the accents of La Felina were less passionate and brilliant, and that a veil, as it were, was extended over all the rest of the representation, so that a person who had heard only the second act of La Griselda would have asked with surprise, if it was really the wonderful prima donna, the songs of whom were purchased with gold, and the wonderful talent of whom, had enslaved the audiences of the great Italian theatres. The reason was, that, after the second act, the star which shone on La Felina had become eclipsed. Monte-Leone had left his box--the box which had been the source of Griselda's inspiration from the commencement of the first act. Hope had sustained the singer during the cavatina, at the beginning of the second act. She fancied that he whom she loved possibly heard her from the recess of some other box. When, however, she was satisfied that he was gone, despair took possession of her. "Nothing touches his heart," said she, with pain. "Neither my love nor my talent are able to captivate him--to attach him to me for a time." Thenceforth, as she sang for him alone, she sang for no one. The holy fire was extinguished. Genius unfurled its wings and flew to the unknown regions of art, whence passion had won it. La Felina finished the opera, as a prima donna should, rendering the music precisely and distinctly, note for note, and as her score required. She neither added a single _fioritura_ nor a single ornament which had not been noted by the composer. In one word, the audience at San Carlo on that day heard the opera of the _Maestro_ Paer and not La Felina. During this, Monte-Leone, who had given up all hopes of reaching Taddeo, and whom Taddeo, paying attention only to the _artiste_, had neither heard nor seen, Monte-Leone walked in front of the opera-house, a prey to the greatest agitation, impatiently waiting for the conclusion of the representation, to see his friend and hear from him what he had to hope or fear at Sorrento.

The opera ended. The crowd slowly dispersed, and Monte-Leone, wrapped up in his cloak, watched with anxiety every spectator who left the theatre. Taddeo did not come. The doors of the theatre were closed, and the Count still waited. Surprised and impatient he went to his hotel, where Taddeo also lived, but he was not there. Night passed away, and he did not come. About three in the morning a stranger was shown in, and gave Monte-Leone three letters. One of them was addressed to the Count: he opened it anxiously.

"Excuse me, my dear friend, at quitting you thus. Excuse me, especially the uneasiness I have created in your mind"--wrote Taddeo--"I have learned that she left Naples to-night, and if I leave her I shall die. I will follow her by post and on horseback, without stopping, until I shall learn whither she has gone. What will I do then! I do not know,--but at least I will know where she is, and I will not fancy that she is lost to me for ever. 'To-morrow,' said she, when she left us, 'you will love me less.' She was mistaken, my friend, or she has deceived me; for to-day I love her better than I did yesterday. My heart suffers too much for me not to sympathize with yours, and I understand how impatient you are to go to Sorrento. I send a letter to my good mother--give it yourself to her. I beg her to receive you as a friend, and as she would receive a brother of mine. Stay with her until I come back. Say that in three days I will come back to ask her to give you Aminta's hand."

"Has the person who gave you these letters gone?" asked Monte-Leone of the messenger.

"He went an hour since from the post-house, on one of our best horses," said the messenger.

Monte-Leone gave him a piece of gold and dismissed him.

"Poor Taddeo!" said he, "to suffer as well as I do--no no, not so much as I do; for earthly love cannot be compared with heavenly passion. Jealousy such as I suffer can be compared to nothing; and all is derived from the serpent's stings, with which Barberini pricked my heart."

The time until day seemed interminable to Monte-Leone. It came at last. The Count rang for Giacomo and dressed himself elegantly. The old man on this occasion assisted him cheerfully and zealously, as he had previously shown repugnance on the night of the terrible expedition at Torre-del-Greco. Monte-Leone ordered his handsomest equipage. A few minutes afterwards the horses pawed impatiently in the court-yard, so that the driver could with difficulty restrain them. When the Count came down, he found Giacomo standing in the door of the saloon so as to bar his egress. Pale and agitated, the old man restrained the Count, and in a stern, quarrelsome voice said:

"What is the matter now? what new folly are you about to commit?"

"What the devil do you mean?" asked the Count, taking hold of the intendant's hand.

"No, Monsignore, you shall not go," said Giacomo, extending his arms so as completely to shut the door, "unless you serve me as you did Stenio Salvatori. Is it not a shame that the noblest of the gentlemen of Naples, that the son of my master, should walk abroad armed like the bravo of Venice--with a sword, poniard and pistol in his bosom? What, if you please, was that box of pistols, placed by little Jack, your groom, as those animals are called in England, in your carriage?"

"What is it to you?" said the Count, impatiently.

"What is it to me?" asked the old man with tears in his eyes. "Are you not again about to risk your life against I know not whom nor why? What is it to me? That you may live, that my last days may not be passed in uneasiness and despair, like those which have gone by--for I love you. Count," said the old man, kneeling before his master, "I love you as a father loves his son. I held you in my arms when you were a child. For heaven's sake renounce your dangerous plans, renounce the acquaintance of those rascally mysterious looking men who come so often to see you. Have nothing to say to that rascally Signor Pignana, whom I would so gladly see hung. Be again happy, gay, and joyous, as you used to he. True, we were ruining ourselves, but we were not conspirators."

The Count gave his hand to Giacomo.

"Giacomo, my good fellow," said he, "I am about to engage in no conspiracy."

"What then?"

"I am about to marry," said Monte-Leone, with a smile.

"Marry! with a case of pistols as a wedding present?"

"Why!" said the Count, moodily, "I may perhaps meet enemies on the road. Now I have more than life to protect: I have my honor."

Monte-Leone, making an affectionate gesture to the old man, descended gayly and sprang into the coach, which bore him rapidly towards Sorrento, and stopped at the door of Signora Rovero's house, as we have previously said.

When she saw Monte-Leone, instead of Taddeo, Signora Rovero trembled.

"Signor," said she to the Count, "for heaven's sake tell me what evil tidings you bear. What misfortune has befallen Taddeo?"

"In two days, Signora, Taddeo will be here, and I have the difficult duty to excuse his absence. He has, however, asked me to deliver you his letter, which explains all."

Signora Rovero took the letter and opened it with eagerness.

"Excuse me, Signor," said she to the Count, "but you must make allowance for a mother's anxiety."

"So be it," she observed, after having read it. "Taddeo is in no danger if we except that his fortune may be bad. A hunting party in the mountains will detain him for two days from us."

"Count," said Signora Rovero, "my son speaks so affectionately of you that I am led to offer you my own love."

"I have the advantage in that respect, Signora, for the kindness with which you treated me while here, and the memories I bore away, have ever since inspired the deepest affection for you."

They entered the saloon, and Signora Rovero introduced Maulear to Monte-Leone. They saluted each other with the most exquisite politeness, but without exchanging a glance.

Between love and hate there is this in common: it sees without the eye; it hears without the ear. Love has a presentiment of love, and hatred of hatred.

Monte-Leone approached Aminta. All his power and energy were insufficient to triumph over the violent agitation which took possession of him when he spoke to the young girl. His loving heart offered but faint opposition to the torrent of passion, which had been so long repressed that it was ready to bear away every obstacle. Aminta blushed and became troubled when she recognized in the vibration of his voice all the emotion Monte-Leone experienced. The conversation became general. Signora Rovero spoke to the Count of his trial, the incidents of which the Marquis had been kind enough to read. The Count bowed to the Marquis as if to acknowledge a favor. Maulear looked away to avoid the necessity of acknowledging it. The Count seemed not to perceive it. Aminta became aware that if he kept silent longer the circumstance would be remarked.

"During your imprisonment, Count, in the Castle _Del Uovo_, I have heard that a terrible episode occurred, the details of which the _Diaro_ does not give."

"The reason was the _Diario_ did not know them. True, like other journalists he might have invented them, but he did not do so; and, perhaps, acted well, for his fancies could not have equalled the truth."

The Count then simply, without exaggeration, and especially without that petition for pity which is so frequently met with, told the story of the terrible scene in the prison.

Aminta listened to every word. She suffered with the prisoner, hoped with him, and followed all the details of the story, exhibiting the most profound pity for the occurrence. Signora Rovero sympathized with her daughter, and, for the time, Monte-Leone was the hero of the villa. All the prejudices of Aminta disappeared in a moment in the presence of Monte-Leone, as the morning vapors are dispersed by the first rays of the sun.

Maulear, in icy silence, listened to the Count and looked at Aminta. As he did so, his brow became covered with clouds precisely as that of Aminta began to grow bright. The latter, perceiving the painful impressions of the Marquis, extended every attention to him, so that Monte-Leone began to grow moody. The two rivals passed the whole day in alternations of hope and fear, happiness and suffering. The state of things, however, was too tense to be of long duration. These few hours seemed centuries to the adorers of Aminta, and if any one had been able to look into the depths of their ulcerated hearts, he would have seen that a spark would have produced an explosion. Many of the neighbors of Signora Rovero, who had not visited her since the ball, ventured to return. Among others present was Gaetano Brignoli. All loved him for his frank and pleasant off-hand speeches, and all received him with good humor and confidence. Maulear, who had laid aside his dislike, received him kindly, as he had previously done distantly. The _Rose of Sorrento_ reproached Gaetano with having forgotten his promise.

"You should yourself on the next day," said she, "have given me news of Taddeo and of Monte-Leone's trial. You, however, only wrote. Friends like you, and brothers like mine, are unworthy of the affection bestowed on them." Then, like a child _making friends_ with a playmate, she took Gaetano into the embrasure of a meadow, and began to talk with him in a low tone. The night promised to be brilliant and serene, and the air to be soft and pleasant. The evening breeze penetrated into the saloon, refreshing the atmosphere with the respiration of the sea. "What a magnificent evening, Marquis," said Monte-Leone to Maulear, as he approached him, and looked at the stars which had begun to dot the sky.

It was the first time the Count had spoken to the Marquis directly. The latter trembled as a soldier who hears the sound of the first battle signal. His emotion was short, and saluting the Count affably as possible, he replied:

"It, is a winter evening in Italy, Count, but in France it would be one of summer."

"Do you not think," said Monte-Leone, "that this is the proper hour for exercise, in this country? The complete repose of nature, the eloquent silence of night, all invite us to confidence, and make us wish for isolation and solitude--"

"Count," said Maulear, "do you wish for a half solitude; a desert inhabited by two persons?"

"Certainly, that is what I mean."

"So do I, and would participate in yours."

"Come, then, I never saw a more beautiful night, and I shall be charmed to enjoy it with you."

These two men, with rage in their hearts, each being an impregnable barrier to the happiness of the other, loving the same woman in the same way, resolved to contend for her, to their last breath;--these two men left the saloon, with smiles on their lips, like friends about to listen to the secret thoughts of each other beneath the shadow of some beautiful landscape, in happiness and pleasure.

Aminta saw them go out. She grew pale, and suffered so that she leaned against the window-case.

V. THREE RIVALS.

Count Monte-Leone and the Marquis de Maulear entered together a vast and beautiful avenue, silvered over by a brilliant moon.

"Signor," said the Count to Maulear, "do you ever have waking dreams? Can you, by the power of your imagination, transport yourself into the future, and, as it were, read your destiny, with all its prosperous and unfortunate incidents, its pleasures and chagrins? This often happens to me, especially by day and when I am unhappy. For a long time, too, I have been unhappy. For instance, not long ago, when shut up in a dark prison, with no prospect before me but that of an unjust death, and the headsman's axe bringing to a close my sad and eventful career, my good angel certainly, for I believe in such beings, sent, two hundred feet below the surface of the earth, a vision of dazzling light and beauty. I was transported beneath the green shadows of myrtles and orange-trees; I breathed an atmosphere impregnated with intoxicating and balsamic perfumes, while near me, with her hand in mine, and her heart beating on my bosom, was a young girl, destined to be my guide through this life of misery; the angel, in fact, of whom I spoke just now. Sorrows, suffering, injustice, the dungeon, and the executioner, all disappeared, and I enjoyed all the luxury of this heavenly revelation; and I said, for the realization of this heavenly revelation, the heart's blood would not be too dear a price. Do you not think so, Marquis?"

"I do, Count," said Maulear, "and especially so, because what your rich imagination has created for you, chance, or my good genius--for I too have faith in them--has displayed before me, not in the delirium of a dream, but in reality. I have seen the myrtle groves of which you dreamed: I have breathed the perfumes you describe so well: I have found the woman your imagination has shadowed to me. I found her one day when I did not expect to do so. I found one more beautiful than I had fancied woman could be, gifted with such charms, grace, and virtue, that I ask myself frequently whether such a being can belong to earth."

"Marquis," said Monte-Leone, and as he spoke he led the Count towards a darker alley, lighted up only by a few rays of the moon, which penetrated the interstices of the branches, "would it not be best to conclude this conversation rather in the dark than in the light? Our words need not any light, and neither you nor I pay any attention to the expression of our faces."

"So be it," said Maulear, and they entered the dark alley.

"Marquis," said Monte-Leone, "the divinity of my dream and the object of your passion are so alike, that I am sure we worship the same idol, and kneel before the same altar. Fortune has led two men of soul and honor into the same route. We both struggle for an object which one only can reach. One of us must tread on a carcass, which must be either yours or mine."

"Count," said Maulear, "we understand each other. We adore the same idol, but you are not ignorant that our rights to offer it homage are different; that I have rights which you have not."

The Count trembled. A word might crush all his hopes. For a few moments he hesitated, and then in a calm voice said,

"Does she love you?"

Without replying to the question, the Marquis said,

"Signora Rovero, for her name is too deeply engraven on our hearts for it not to spring to our lips, is aware of my sentiments, of which I have already told her."

"And has accepted them?" said Monte-Leone, in yet greater trouble.

"No," said the Marquis, honorably; "but bade me hope that some day she would."

"Then," said the Count, with joy, "nothing is lost. Marquis, the past is yours, but the future is mine. Had I the mind and grace of a French nobleman, I would, perhaps, propose to you a contest of courtesy, and might rely on my hope, my love, my attention, to triumph. But the contest must be of a different kind; for I will expose myself to no risks." Lowering his voice, he continued: "Not one and the other can present his love to the Signorina Rovero, but _one without the other_. You or I alone; and, as I told you just now, there is a life too many."

"Very well, signor,--you wage your life against mine. I consent,--but must observe that this duel should, at least, accrue to the interest of one or the other of us; and yet I do not think that Signorina Rovero would touch a blood-stained hand."

"Signor," said Monte-Leone, "from the moment you accept my challenge, the mystery and secrecy with which it must be shrouded shall be my affair; and, if you please, I will tell you of my plans."

"Do so, signor," said Maulear, coldly.

"Let us leave this alley, and go towards that group of trees in that direction."

He led Maulear towards the sea. When they stood on the shore, he said, "Below there is a kind of cove, and in it a gondola like those of Venice--a pleasure-skiff--built formerly by the minister Rovero for his family. At this hour to-morrow, we will meet in this wood and go to the boat-house. We will then put to sea, and with no witness but the sea and sky, we will settle our affair. Two men will steer the bark to sea, and one wilt guide it back----"

In spite of his courage, Maulear could not but shudder at one who detailed with such coolness so horrible a plan. The manner of death frequently enhances our terror, and he who in a forest would bare his bosom to his adversary's ball, would shrink from it on the immensity of the ocean.

"But," said Maulear, "is all this romantic preparation, is this naval drama in which you insist on appearing, necessary to our purpose? Any other secret encounter would have the same effect, and would eventuate equally satisfactorily. At the distance of a few days' travel, would we not be able to fight more safely than here?"

"No, Marquis, I must remain in this villa until Taddeo de Sorrento shall have returned. Neither I nor you can leave it without arousing suspicions, and in two days hence, we would no longer be equals; for honor compels me to say that Taddeo has promised me his sister's hand, and that the influence he exerts over his mother will without doubt induce her to decide in my favor. If, however, you prefer to run that risk, I will not oppose you."

"No no," said Maulear, who remembered what Taddeo had said to him in relation to his sister, "I will fight for her I love at the very foot of the altar--"

"Signor," said Monte-Leone, "let us avoid all scandal. The death of him who falls may be easily accounted for; and as you said, we must never suffer her we love to think that the happiness of one of us has cost the other his life."

"So be it," said Maulear, "I accept your offer."

"To-morrow we will meet," said the Count.

The two enemies returned to the villa calm, and apparently undisturbed, as if they had been the best friends possible. When they came into the room again, Aminta sat by her mother. The eyes of the young girl, however, turning constantly towards the door, seemed to expect the return of the two young men with anxiety. Her cheeks became slightly flushed when they entered. The Count approached her and besought her to sing as he had often heard her. Aminta sat at the piano. Scarcely, however, had she sung the first bar, than the door of the saloon opened and Scorpione glided in and sat at the feet of the young girl, where he laid down as he used to do; not, however, daring to look at her. Since the scandal he had caused, he had been in disgrace with all the family, and his mistress did not speak to him. The Count, who had become acquainted with Tonio during his first visit to Sorrento, could not repress a movement of horror at the appearance of the wretch. Far, however, from being angry, Tonio seemed glad to see him, and testified his pleasure by various affectionate signs. Gaetano, who was absent from the room, just then returned, and at the request of Signora Rovero sang several duets with Aminta. An extraordinary feeling seemed to influence the young man, and only with the greatest difficulty could he get through his part. When the evening was over, all retired. The next day rolled by in embarrassing constraint to all the inhabitants of the villa. An atmosphere of sadness surrounded them, like the dark clouds which seem at the approach of a storm to overhang the earth. Count Monte-Leone alone seemed master of himself, and sought to cure the general _atony_ in which even Maulear was involved. A sensible difference was remarked between the two men, each of whom loved the same woman, while one of them must lose her forever. The Count did not take his eyes from her, and seemed thus to lay in a provision of pleasure for eternity, which seemed ready to open before him. Maulear, on the other hand, was sad and pensive, and scarcely dared to lift his eyes to Aminta, fearing, beyond doubt, that he would thus increase his sorrow and distress, and diminish his courage when the crisis came. As the day wore on. Aminta, feeling unwell, retired to her room. Signora Rovero, accustomed to see her daughter have similar attacks, sat to play _reversis_ with Count Brignoli and two other persons. Monte-Leone and Maulear exchanged a mysterious sign and left the room nearly at the same time. The night was not so beautiful as the preceding one had been. The disk of the moon sometimes was clouded, and the wind whistled among the trees of the park; all nature, deeply agitated, seemed to sympathize with the thoughts which agitated the minds of the two enemies. The dark and cloudy sky was a meet back-ground for such a picture.

Nine o'clock was struck by the bell of the Church at Sorrento, when two men met at the cove we have described. One of them wrapped in a cloak had a case under his arm. They went towards the bank and found the gondola there. This boat was long, like those of Venice, in imitation of which it had been made--had a little cabin in its stern, which now was closed. In it the ladies used to take refuge when bad weather interfered with their pleasure. The two men used all their strength to detach the gondola from the shore. At last they succeeded. The most robust then took one of the oars and pushed the boat from the bank. Just as they were about to put off, a burst of demoniac laughter rung in their ears. A very demon, a breathing spirit of evil, had witnessed all their preparations, and had learned, from its shape, the contents of the box; the idea of what they meditated caused him to utter this shout of laughter. This demon was Scorpione. This deformity was the rival of Monte-Leone and Maulear.

The blue and azure waves of the sea of Naples on that night seemed dark as ink. The wind agitated them. Calm as they usually are, and like a vast cemetery, the tombs of which open to receive the dead, they opened before the prow of the boat like a grave, as they were intended to be. At a distance of about three hundred fathoms the two adversaries ceased to row and replaced the oars in the gondola. Without speaking, they took out the pistols, examined their locks, and opened them.

"Signor," said Monte-Leone, "I thank you for the honor you have done me in deigning to use my arms."

"The arms of Count Monte-Leone are not to be refused."

"A true hand gives them."

"A true hand receives them."

Nothing more was said. They then proceeded to place themselves at the several ends of the boat. The Count uncovered himself. Maulear did also. They let fall their cloaks and opened the linen which covered their bosoms. They raised their pistols, took aim, and were about to fire.

* * * * *

The door of the cabin was thrown open, and Aminta rushed to the centre of the gondola. Gaetano followed her. The weapons fell from the hands of the rivals; and in terror and surprise they looked on this apparition. Not a cry escaped from their lips. Pale and motionless, they looked at each other without, at first, recognizing Aminta. Not a word passed their lips. Terror-stricken, they fancied themselves in the presence of some heavenly being, sent, like the angel of peace, to rescue them from death. The voice of Aminta, full of trouble and terror, echoed over the waves, like that of an angel, and alone aroused them from the ecstatic state in which they were plunged.

"Signori," said she, "I might sooner have put a stop to this atrocious duel, the very idea of which terrifies me; had it not have been so near its completion, you would, perhaps, have denied the intention to fight after all, within a few days. Thanks to the assistance of Gaetano, my childhood's friend, who yesterday evening became acquainted with your intention, I have by God's aid been able to prevent it. I wished my presence to be grave and solemn, that you might never renew the attempt; in order that, as it were, in the presence of God and of death, you might know my fixed determination. I would not be burdened with an existence which had cost the life of a fellow-being: you, Signor Monte-Leone, by the revered manes of your father; and you, Marquis de Maulear, by all you love, I conjure to swear that you will respect the life of him I shall accept as my husband."

"Impose no such oath on me," said Monte-Leone.

"Let me die first," said Maulear.

"Not you only, but I will die also. If I do not hear you swear, I will throw myself into the sea."

She placed her foot on the gunwale of the boat.

"We swear," said the rivals, rushing towards her.

"Thanks, Signori, I will trust your oath. Count Monte-Leone," said she, "the Marquis de Maulear saved my life; you will also learn, hereafter, how generously he resolved to save my honor when it was compromised. My heart is de Maulear's, and I give him my hand."

The Marquis fell at Aminta's feet.

"To you," she continued, "Count Monte-Leone, I can offer only my respect and esteem."

"Signorina," said Monte-Leone, with a voice full of dignity and despair, "I accept even the boon you offer me; and henceforth he whom you love is sacred to me."

By a violent effort over himself he extended his hand to Maulear. The waves had borne the bark towards the shore, and all who had participated in this scene returned safely to the villa. Signora Rovero, who did not know what had passed, on the next day received a letter from Monte-Leone, who, during the night, had left the villa.

VI.--MARRIAGE.

Nothing can describe the intensity of Count Monte-Leone's grief when he was again in the carriage, which, on the evening before, had borne him to happiness, and now took him back to Naples, sad and despairing. The Count had overcome his own nature, and this was a great victory to one who usually yielded to every prompting of passion. On this occasion he had restrained himself and overcome his rage at his rival's triumph. He overcame his agony at the wreck of his hopes. When he left Sorrento, and awoke, so to say, from the stupefaction into which he had plunged, the excitable brain and fiery heart again re-opened.

"I was a fool," said he, "I was a fool when I yielded my happiness to another. I was yet more mad when I swore to respect his life, when something far more violent than mine is wrested from me. Has he not crushed and tortured my heart? I regret even my place of imprisonment," continued he. "There I had dreams of love; and had death reached me in that abyss, I should have borne away hopes of the future which now are crushed for ever."

Two torrents of tears rolled down the cheeks of this iron-hearted man, over which they had rarely flown before.

On the morning after Monte-Leone's return to his hotel, he might have been observed sitting before the portrait of the victim of Carlo III., the holy martyr of conscience, as he called his father, looking on his noble brow with the most tender respect. We have spoken of the almost superstitious faith of the Count in the fact that his father protected him in all the events of his life. We have heard him call on his father when about to be buried in the waves of the sea, and then become resigned to death in the pious faith that his father waited for him. Whenever danger menaced Monte-Leone; whenever he was unexpectedly prosperous, or was involved in misfortune; whenever his life was lighted up with prosperity, or misfortune overwhelmed him, he always looked to this parent. He thought his pure spirit hovered above him; and encouraged by this celestial aid, he trusted to the mutations of fortune without fear or apprehension. When he looked at this adored image, consolation seemed always to descend on his soul. Overcome by the boundless love Aminta had inspired, he had forgotten the political duties to which he was devoted. It seemed to him that this cause, to which he had consecrated his life, had wonderfully diminished in importance since his trial.

"Can it be, oh my father, that you were unwilling for my love to interfere with the prospects of the duties imposed on me by your death? Or, is it that in your pity you have feared that, in my dangers, the angel to whom I have devoted my existence would be overwhelmed. If, oh my father, it be thy will that I suffer these cruel torments; if I am to reserve my energy for the cause I defend, be rejoiced at my sufferings, for I am able to bear them. Ere long I will again see those who have trusted me with their fate, and the suspicions of whom offend and wound me. They will know my resolutions, and I shall know whether I shall remain their leader or tread my weary way alone."

Just then the door of his cabinet opened, and a man appeared, or rather a spectre, so much had his appearance been changed by fatigue and suffering. He rushed into the arms of Monte-Leone.

"Taddeo," said he, "my God! what has happened? How pale you are! Why are these tears in your eyes."

"My friend, La Felina has deceived me only by a day. She was, however, mistaken herself. To-morrow, said she, you will _love me less_. To-day I love her no more. You see I have done better than she even hoped."

He fell, with his heart crushed, on a chair, and sobbed.

"Speak, speak to me," said Monte-Leone, forgetful of his friend's suffering in his own.

"As I wrote to you," said Taddeo, "I determined to follow her, and find out her retreat at all events. Had it been necessary, I would have followed her to the end of the world. Leaving the horse I had in a street near the theatre, I went to the door whence I supposed La Felina would come. I had been there an hour when I saw a post-carriage approach. A few moments had elapsed when a woman, accompanied by a servant, left the theatre, and after looking anxiously around, to be sure that she was unobserved, entered the carriage. The valet got up behind, and the postillion, who had not left the saddle, whipped up his horses and left in a gallop. I mounted my horse and followed the carriage, keeping just two hundred yards behind it. The carriage was driven towards Rome, and at every post-house the horses were changed, on which occasions I kept out of sight, and then resumed my pursuit. Thus we travelled about fifteen leagues; when, however, we reached the eighth post-house, the carriage spring became broken and the body was thrown into a ditch. I rushed towards it, opened the door, and, in a fainting condition, received the person it contained. I bore her to the road, and, to give her air, threw aside her veil. I uttered a cry of rage and agony. The woman in my arms was not La Felina. The sound of my voice aroused the stranger's attention, and she looked at me as if she were afraid. 'Who are you?' said she, trembling. 'What do you wish?' 'To save La Felina, whom I thought was here.' 'La Felina! You were in search of La Felina!' 'Certainly.' 'And you are the horseman whom Giuseppe, the courier, told me at the last relay, followed us, are you?' 'Certainly I am.' The woman examined her arms, etc., to see that she was not hurt, looked at me most ironically, and then bursting into laughter, said: 'Well, after all, the trick was well played.' 'What trick?' 'The one La Felina has played on all her lovers, the most ardent of whom you are.' I looked at the woman so earnestly, and sorrow seemed so deeply marked on my countenance, that I saw an expression of pity steal over her face. 'Poor young man!' said she, 'then you really loved her?' 'I did, and if I lose her I shall die.' 'Come,' said she, 'you will not die. If all who have told me the same thing died, Naples would be like the catacombs of Rome. Come with me,' she continued, 'to the post-house, for now I feel by the pain I suffer that my arm is out of place. There I will tell you all.' I went with the woman to the post-house, when a few drops of cordial soon invigorated her. 'This is the explanation of what is a matter of so much surprise to you. Perhaps I should be silent; but you seem to love La Felina so truly, and a young man who really loves is so interesting that I will tell you all.' The circumlocution of this woman almost ran me mad! She finally said: 'My mistress was afraid some of her lovers would follow her, and wishing to conceal the route she had gone, took the idea of substituting me for herself, and sent me to Rome, where she is to write me her destination. You followed me instead of her. She was right, and had good reason to act as she did.' 'Then she has not yet left,' asked I, thinking of a means to rejoin her. 'She was to leave Naples,' said the woman, 'an hour after me, and is, no doubt, now far from the city.' 'And does she travel alone on these dangerous roads?' said I. 'Oh, no, she travels with him.' 'With him! of whom, for heaven's sake, do you speak?' 'Ah,' said the woman, 'La Felina would never forgive me if I told you. He, too, might make me pay dearly for my indiscretion.' I begged, I besought the woman to conceal nothing from me, and gave her all the money I had, promising to increase the sum tenfold. She yielded at last, and told me that _La Felina_ had left Naples with her lover. Her lover! do you hear?" continued Taddeo, in a delirium of rage, "and her lover is the minister of police, the Duke of Palma."

"More perfidious than the water!" said Monte-Leone, contemptuously. "Poor Taddeo!"

"Do not pity me," said the latter, in a paroxysm of terrible rage. "I was to be pitied when I loved her, when a divinity dwelt in my soul, when my love was ecstatic and endowed her with an innocence, which my reason told me she did not possess. I was fool enough to deceive myself. Now this woman to be sure is but a woman; she is less than feminine, as the mistress of a rich and powerful noble, the Duke of Palmo. Love might have killed me, but contempt has stifled love."

His head fell on his chest, and he wept. He wept as man weeps for a departed passion, which has vivified his heart, but which yields to death, or worse still, another passion.

"My friend," said Monte-Leone, "your grief is cruel, but I suffer more intensely!" Monte-Leone told Taddeo what had taken place at Sorrento.

The friends were again locked in the arms of each other, and mingled their tears--the one for the loss of an _earthly passion_, and the other for a _celestial affection_, as Monte-Leone characterized the two sentiments when he read a letter of Rovero's. Taddeo had appointed the following day for his return to Sorrento, and faithful to his promise he left Naples for the villa of his mother. The farewell of the two men was sad and touching, for a long time must elapse before they met again. Monte-Leone had resolved to leave Naples for some time. The proximity of Sorrento lacerated his heart, and to see her he loved the wife of another would to him be insupportable. Taddeo was aware of the reasons why the Count had determined to travel, and had he no mother he would also have been anxious to leave the country.

"Taddeo," said Monte-Leone to his friend, when the former was about to set out, "I have a favor to ask of you on which I place an immense estimate, and for which I must be indebted to your love. Here," said he, presenting the magnificent emerald wrought by Benvenuto Cellini, "take this ring, and beg your sister to accept it. Tell her, as she offered me her friendship, I have a right to send a testimonial to her of my devotion." Then with a voice trembling with emotion, he added, "Say this ring preserved my life. This will not add to its value in her eyes; but tell her in confidence the history of this ring, and some day," said he, with a bitter smile, "it may be looked on as a curious relic."

"Not so, not so," said Taddeo, kissing the ring. "To us it cannot but be a precious treasure."

Perhaps while he acted thus, Taddeo thought not only of his friend, but of the woman who had preserved him from death.

Taddeo left.

Fifteen days after his reaching home, all Sorrento put on its holiday attire. The church of the town, splendidly decorated, the lighted torches, the people in their gala dresses, all announced that some remarkable event was about to take place in the village. The bells rung loud peals, and young girls dressed in white, with flowers in their hands, stood on the church portico. Certainly a great event was about to take place. The _White Rose of Sorrento_ was about to be married to a French nobleman of high rank, _Henri Marquis de Maulear_.

About noon there was a rumor among the crowd in front of the church that the bridal party were near. All hurried to meet them, and Aminta was seen leaning on her brother's arm, while the Marquis escorted Signora Rovero.

The appearance of the beautiful young girl, whiter than her veil, paler than the flowers which adorned her brow, produced a general sensation of admiration. Mingled with this, however, was a kind of sadness, when the melancholy on her brow was observed. The Marquis seemed also to be ill at ease, and to suffer under the influence of feelings which on such a day were strange indeed. All care, all anxiety should be lost in the intoxication of love. Maulear had purchased his happiness by an error, and this oppressed him. After the noble decision of Aminta, and the preference she had so heroically expressed at the time of his purposed duel with Monte-Leone, Maulear had not dared to mention the letter of his father. He had simply told Signora Rovero, that he was master of his own actions, and sure of his father's consent and approbation to the marriage he was about to contract. The Signora, who was credulous, was confident that a brilliant match was secured for Aminta, and suffered herself to be easily persuaded. Maulear, too, became daily more infatuated; and, listening to passion alone, had informed his father, not that he was about to marry, but that when the letter reached him he would be married. Yet when he had sent the letter, and the time was come, all his fears were aroused, and he shuddered at the apprehension of the consequences of what he was about to do. In this state of mind he went to the altar, and nothing but the beauty of his bride and the solemnity of the ceremony could efface the sombre clouds which obscured his brow. The priest blessed the pair, and a few minutes after the young Marquis of Maulear, with his beautiful _Marquise_, left the village.

Just when the venerable village priest, in God's name, placed Aminta's hand in Henri's, the terrible cry we have already heard twice echoed through the arches of the church, and a man was seen to rush towards the sea. The shout, though it filled the church, was uttered in the portico, and had not interrupted the service. Thenceforth _Scorpione_ was never seen at Sorrento.

FOOTNOTES:

[N] Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1850, by Stringer & Townsend, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the Southern District of New York.

[O] _Anglice._ Good day, my dear Pignana.

[P] The original of this sentence is _Je vais vous donner la liste ... c'est a dire le compte de_ NOS HOMMES ... _non de_ NOS SOMMES, _etc., etc._ It is scarcely probably that MONTE-LEONE and Pignana, speaking Italian, indulged in French _jeux des mots_.

THE ABBE DE VOISENON AND HIS TIMES.

From Frazer's Magazine

The province of Brie, in France, divided and subdivided since the Revolution of 1789, into departments, arondissements, and cantons, is filled with chateaux, which, in the reign of Louis XV., were inhabited by those gold-be-spangled marquises, those idle, godless abbes, and those obese financiers, whom the secret memoirs of Grimm and Bachaumont, and the letters of the Marquis de Lauraguais, have held up to such unsparing ridicule and contempt. This milky and cheese-producing Brie, this inexhaustible Io, was, at the epoch of the regent Orleans and his deplorable successor, a literal cavern of pleasures, in the most impure acceptation of the term; every chateau which the Black Band has not demolished is, as it were, a half-volume of memoirs in which may be read the entire history of the times. Here is the spot where formerly stood the chateau of Samuel Bernard, the prodigal, it is true, of an anterior age, but worthy of the succeeding one; there is the pavilion of Bourei, another financier, another Jupiter of all the Danaes of the Theatre Italien: on this side we see Vaux, the residence of that most princely of finance ministers, whose suddenly acquired power and wealth, and as sudden downfall, may surely point a moral for all ministers present and to come; on that side we have the chateau of Law, the trigonometrical thief; and Brunoy, the residence of the greatest eccentric perhaps in the annals of French history: in a word, wherever the foot is placed, there arises a sort of lamentation of the eighteenth century--that celebrated century, whose limits we do not pretend to circumscribe as the astronomers would, but whose beginning may be dated from the decline of the reign of Louis XIV., its career closing with Barras, whose immodest chateau still displays at the present day its restored foundations on the soil upon which Vaux, Brunoy, and Voisenon, shone so fatally.

It was in this last named little chateau that was born and educated the celebrated abbe, the friend of Voltaire, of Madame Favart, and of the Duc de la Valliere; and here it was, also, that in manhood its possessor would occasionally resort, though not the least in the world a man who could appreciate rural enjoyments, for the purpose of reposing from the fatigues of some of his epicurean pilgrimages to his friends at Paris or Montrouge, and which was his final sojourn when age and infirmities rendered it imperatively necessary for him to breathe the pure air of his native place, far away from the heating _petits soupers_ of the capital, and the various other dearly cherished scenes of his earlier years.

Claude Henri Fusee de Voisenon, Abbe of Jard, and Minister Plenipotentiary of the Prince-Bishop of Spire, was born at Voisenon on the 8th of June, 1708. Biographers have, perhaps, laid too much stress on the debility of constitution which he brought with him into the world, inherited, they say, from his mother, an exceedingly delicate woman. Since the examples of longevity given by Fontenelle and Voltaire, of whom the first lived to the use of a hundred, and the second to upwards of four-score years, and yet both of whom came into the world with very doubtful chances of existence, it is become a very hazardous task to determine, or even to foretell, length of days by the state of health at birth. They add, that an unhealthy nurse, aggravating the hereditary weakness of the child, infused with her milk into his blood the germs of that asthma from which he suffered all his life, and of which he eventually died. These facts accepted--a delicate mother, an unhealthy nurse, an asthma, and constant spittings of blood--it follows that, even with these serious disadvantages to contend with, a man may live and even enjoy life up to the age of sixty-eight. How many healthy men there are who would be content to attain this age! And if the Abbe de Voisenon did not exceed the bounds of an age of very fair proportions, we must bear in mind that, though even an invalid, he constantly trifled with his health with the imprudence of a man of vigorous constitution; eating beyond measure, drinking freely, presiding at all the _petits soupers_--_petit_ only in name--of the capital, passing the nights in running from _salon_ to _salon_, and seldom retiring to rest before morning: a worthy pupil of that Hercules of debauchery, Richelieu, his master and his executioner. Terrified at the delicate appearance of his child, his father dared not send him to school, but had him brought up under his own eye, with all the patience of an indulgent parent and the solicitude of a physician. Five years' cares were sufficient to develop the intellectual capacities of a mind at once lively and clear, and marvellously fitted by nature to receive and retain the lessons of preceptors. At eleven years of age he addressed a rhyming epistle to Voltaire, who replied,--

"You love verses, and I predict that you will make charming ones. Come and see me, and be my pupil."

If Voisenon justified the prediction, he scarcely surpassed the favorable sense which it incloses. Verbose, incorrect, poor in form, pale and washy as diluted Indian ink, his verses occasionally display witty touches, because every one was witty in the eighteenth century; but to class them with the works of the poets of his day as _poetry_ is impossible--they merit only being considered in the light of lemonade made from Voltaire's well-squeezed lemons.

In many respects the prose of the eighteenth century, not being an art, but rather the resource of unsuccessful poets, lent itself better than did the muse to the idle fantasies of the Abbe de Voisenon. His facetiae, his historiettes, his Oriental tales, reunited later (at least in part) with the works of the Comte de Caylus, and with the libertine tales of Duclos and the younger Crebillon, prove the facility with which he could imitate Voltaire, while his lucubrations must be considered as far inferior to the short tales of the latter author. For the most part too free, too indecent, in short, to show their faces beside some elaborately serious fragments which form what are called his works, they figure in the work we have just named under the title of _Recueil de ces Messieurs; Aventures des Bals des Bois; Etrennes de la St. Jean; Les Ecosseuses; les Oeufs de Paques_, &c. We know, by the memoirs of the time, that a society of men of letters, formed by Mademoiselle Quinaut du Frene, and composed of fourteen members chosen by her, had proposed to itself the high and difficult mission of supping well at stated intervals, and of being immensely witty and extravagantly gay. At the end of the half-year these effusions of wit and gayety were printed by the society at the mutual expense of its members, and given to the world under the title of _Recueil de ces Messieurs_.[Q] Deprived of the illusive accompaniments of the lights, the sparkling eyes, the tinkling glasses, and the indulgent good-nature engendered by an excellent dinner, good wines, and an ample dessert, these table libertinages, when read nearly a century afterwards, lose all their piquancy of flavor and become simply nauseous. The readings, and consequently the dinners, took place sometimes at the house of Mademoiselle Quinaut, sometimes at that of the Comte de Caylus.

Having conceived a disgust for the profession of arms--for which he had been originally intended--in consequence of having fought with and wounded a young officer in a duel, he determined upon embracing the ecclesiastical state; and shortly after taking orders was inducted by Cardinal Fleury to the royal abbey of Jard--an easy government, the seat of which was his own chateau of Voisenon.

As soon as he was actually a dignitary of the Church, he turned his thoughts entirely to the stage! In compliance with the request of Mademoiselle Quinaut, the new Abbe of Jard wrote a series of dramatic pieces, among which may be cited, _La Coquette fixee_, _Le Reveil de Thalie_, _Les Mariages assortis_, and _Le Jeune Grecque_, little drawing-room comedies, which have not kept possession of the stage, and to which French literature knows not where to give a place at the present day, so far are they from offering a single recommendable quality. The only style of composition in which the Abbe de Voisenon might have, perhaps, distinguished himself, had he been seconded by an intelligent musician, was the operatic. In this _baladin_ talent of his there was something of the freedom and sparkle of the Italian abbes; and yet the Abbe de Voisenon enjoyed during his life-time a high degree of celebrity. Seeing the utter impossibility of justifying this celebrity by his works, we must presume that it proceeded chiefly from his amiable character, his pointed epigrammatical conversation, and in a great measure, also, from his brilliant position in the world. And, after all, did celebrity require other causes at a time when a man's success was established, not by the publicity of the press, but from the words dropped from his lips in the "world," and from the occasional enunciation of a sparkling _bon mot_ quickly caught up and for a length of time repeated? Were we to protest against this species of _illustration_, as the French call it, we should be in the wrong: each epoch has its own; since then times are altered: now-a-days, in France, a man obtains celebrity through the medium of the press, formerly it was by the _salons_. In general, the French _litterateurs_, especially the journalists, may be said to write better now than they did then; but where, we should like to know, is there now to be found a young writer of thirty capable of creating and sustaining a conversation in a society consisting of upwards of a hundred distinguished persons? The lackeys of M. de Boufflers were, in all probability, more in their place in a _salon_ than would be the most learned or witty writers of the present day.

If the Abbe de Voisenon was not exactly an eagle as regards common sense and intellectual attainments, what are we to think of M. de Choiseul, who wished to appoint him minister of France at some foreign court? The Abbe de Voisenon a minister! that man whom M. de Lauraguais called _a handful of fleas_! But if he became not minister of France, it was decreed by fate that he should be minister of somebody or other; he was too incapable to escape this honor. Some years after the failure of this ridiculous project of M. de Choiseul, the Prince-bishop of Spire appointed him his minister plenipotentiary at the Court of France. His admission into the bosom of the French Academy was all that was now required to complete his happiness, and this honor was shortly afterwards conferred upon him, for he was duly elected to the chair vacated by the death of Crebillon.

At the age of fifty-two, with the intention of getting rid of his asthma, his constant companion through life, he determined to try the effect of mineral waters upon his enfeebled constitution. His journey from Paris to Cautarets, and his sojourn in this head-quarters of bitumen and sulphur, as related by himself in his letters to his friends, may be considered as an historical portraiture of the method of travelling, as pursued by the grandees of the time, as well as being the truest pages of the idle, epicurean, pleasure-loving, yet infirm, existence of the narrator.

"We passed through Tours yesterday (writes he to his friend Favart, in his first letter, dated from Chatelherault the 8th day of June, 1761), where Madame la Duchess de Choiseul received all the honors due to the _gouvernante_ of the province: we entered by the Mall, which is planted with trees as beautiful as those of the Parisian Boulevards. Here we found a mayor, who came to harangue the duchess. It happened that M. Sainfrais, during the harangue, had posted himself directly behind the speaker, so that every now and then his horse, which kept constantly tossing its head, as horses will do, would give him a little tap on the back--a circumstance which cut his phrases in half in the most ludicrous manner possible; because at every blow the orator would turn round to see what was the matter, after which he would gravely resume his discourse, while I was ready to burst with laughter the whole time. Two leagues further on we had another rich scene; an ecclesiastic stopped the carriage, and commenced a pompous harangue addressed to M. Poisonnier, whom he kept calling _mon Prince_. M. Poisonnier replied, that he was more than a prince, and that in fact the lives of all princes depended upon him, for he was a physician. 'What!' exclaimed the priest, 'you are not M. le Prince de Talmont?' 'He has been dead these two years,' replied the Duchesse de Choiseul. 'But who, then, is in this carriage?' 'It is Madame la Duchesse de Choiseul,' replied some one. Forthwith, not a whit disconcerted, he commenced another harangue, in which he lauded to the skies the excellent education she had bestowed on her son. 'But I have no son, monsieur,' replied the duchess quietly. 'Ah! you have no son; I am very sorry for that;' and so saying his reverence put his harangue in his pocket, and walked off.

"Adieu, my worthy friend. We shall reach Bordeaux on Thursday. I intend to feed well when I get there."

What an edifying picture of the state of the high and low clergy of France at this epoch is presented to us! The Abbe de Voisenon rolling along in his carriage, indulging in the anticipatory delights of some good 'feeds' when he shall get to Bordeaux; and a hungry priest haranguing right and left the first comers who may present themselves, in order to obtain the wherewithal to procure a dinner.

It is to Madame Favart that Voisenon writes from Bordeaux:--

"We arrived here at ten o'clock yesterday evening, and found Marshal de Richelieu, who had crossed the Garonne to meet the Duchesse de Choiseul. This city is beautiful viewed at a distance--all that appertains to the exterior is of the best; but what afflicts me most of all, is the sad fact that there are no sardines to be had on account of the war. I was not aware that the sardines had taken part against; however, I revenged myself upon two ortolans, which I devoured for supper, along with a _pate_ of red partridges _aux truffes_, which, though made as long back as November last--as Marshal de Richelieu assured me--was as fresh and as _parfume_ as if it had been made but the night before."

If the reader should feel astonished that an asthmatical patient could eat partridges and truffles without being horribly ill, his astonishment will not be of long continuance. The following day Voisenon wrote to Favart:--

"Oh, my dear friend, I have passed a frightful night. I was obliged to smoke and take my _kermes_. I shall not be able to see any of the 'lions' of the place. If I am three days following in this state after I get to Cauterets, you will have me back again with you by the end of the month."

One would suppose that after this gentle hint our abbe would be more prudent; not a bit of it. In the same letter he adds:--

"The dinner-table yesterday was covered with sardines. At the very first start I eat six in as many mouthfuls--a truly delicious _morceau_; despite my _kermes_, I reckon upon eating as many to-day, along with my two ortolans. We leave to-morrow, and on Wednesday we shall reach Cauterets."

Thus, ill on the 11th in consequence of a monstrous supper taken on the 10th, we find him, for all that, on the following day devouring sardines by the half-dozen, and ortolans again! On the 18th he writes from Cauterets to his friend Favart:--

"I arrived yesterday in good health, but have slept badly, because the house in which I lodge is situated over a torrent, which makes a frightful noise. This country I can only compare to an icy horror, like the tragedy of _Teree_."

Twelve days afterwards, Voisenon writes to Madame Favart:--

"Madame de Choiseul's uncle, who paid you so many compliments in the green-room, arrived yesterday: he lodges in the same house with me.... I introduced him this morning into one of the best houses in Cauterets--indeed the very best house--where, I must confess, I myself spend three parts of the entire day; in a word, it is the pastry-cook's. This learned individual compounds admirable tartlets, as well as some little cakes of singular lightness; but above all, certain delicious little puffs composed of cream and millet-flour, which he calls _millassons_. I stuff them all day long. This makes the waters turn sour on my stomach, and myself turn very yellow; but I am tolerably well notwithstanding."

This gormandizing Abbe de Voisenon, ever hanging, as it were, between _pates_ and his grave, becomes now a rather interesting subject of study. We begin to speculate upon what it is that will finally carry him off: his asthma, or the confectionary he daily swallows.

He writes to Favart:--

"I bathe every morning, and during this operation I bear a striking resemblance to a match dipped in sulphur. I keep my health, however, tolerably well, though still suffering from my asthma, of which I fear I shall never be cured."

It would be a wonder if he should be cured, with his unfortunate table excesses, which would have killed half-a-dozen healthy men. In vain do we seek in his correspondence with Favart and his wife, a single thought unconnected with the pleasures of the stomach. We have read with what delight he sings the praises of a pastry-cook established at Cauterets, famous for his millet-cakes and cream-puffs. His happiness did not stop here:--

"A second pastry-cook (he cries), upon my reputation, has set up here. There is a daily trial of skill between the two artists; I eat and judge, and it is my stomach that pays the cost. I go to the bath, and return to the oven. I shall come here again in the thrush season. We have red partridges, which are brought here from all parts; they are delicious."

In short, he remained so long stuffing confectionary at Cauterets, where he had gone solely to take care of himself, and to live with the strictest regularity, that on the eve of his departure he wrote sadly to Madame Favart:--'I am just the same as when you saw me last: sometimes asthmatical, and always gormandizing.' The sufferings which he experienced during his sojourn at, Bareges, previous to his final return to Paris, are proofs of the deplorable effects of the mineral waters upon his health:--

"I am suffering dreadfully; and am now, while I write, laboring under so violent an attack of asthma, that I cannot doubt but that the air of this country is as bad for me as that of Montrouge. If I am as bad to-morrow, I shall return to pass the week at Cauterets, and on Saturday go on to Pau, where I shall wait for the ladies who are to pass through on Monday, on their way to Bayonne. I know I shall be in a miserable state during the journey."

Such were the benefits derived by the Abbe de Voisenon from his four months' sojourn at the baths of Cauterets and Bareges. He returned to Voisenon infinitely worse than when he left it. On the eve of his departure for home, where, as he said some time afterwards, he wished _to be on the same floor with the tombs of his ancestors_, he devoured a monstrous dinner on the Bareges mountains.

Finding that the mineral waters of the Pyrenees had failed in reestablishing his health--that is, if he ever had health--the Abbe de Voisenon abandoned physicians and their fruitless prescriptions, to seek elsewhere remedies for the cure of his asthma, which became more and more troublesome as he began to get into years. As he was constantly speaking of his disease to everybody, and as everybody--at least all those who wished to get into his good graces--spoke of it to him, he learned one day that there existed in some garret of Paris a certain abbe deeply learned in all the mysteries of occult chemistry, an adept of the great Albert, the master of masters in empirical art. Like all sorcerers, and all _savants_ of the eighteenth century, this abbe was represented as being in a state of frightful misery and destitution. He who possessed the secrets of plants and minerals, of fire and light, of the generation of beings, had not the wherewithal to procure himself a decent _soutane_, nor even a morsel of bread. Though, by the efforts of his magic, he had reached a dizzy height on the paths of knowledge, it was, alas! a fact but too true, that he was unable to maintain himself more than a month in the same apartment--perhaps on account of his indifference to the interests of his landlords. For all that he was a marvellous being, inventing specifics for the cure of all diseases, and consequently of asthma among the rest. It was even whispered, but secretly and mysteriously, and with a sort of awe--for they were very superstitious, though very atheistical, in the eighteenth century--that all these specifics were comprised in one remedy, namely, the celebrated AURUM POTABILE, or fluid gold. Now every one knows, or at least ought to know, that potable gold, that is, gold in a cold and fluid state, like wine, triumphs over every malady to which the human frame is subject: it is health itself, perpetual youth, and would be no less than immortality had not Paracelsus, who, they say, also possessed the secret of potable gold, unfortunately died at the age of thirty-three, or thirty-five: thus establishing a fatal argument against its virtues in this respect. But one thought now possessed Voisenon--that of getting hold, somehow or other, of this magic abbe, and of enticing him to his chateau; but an insensate and monstrous desire was this--a desire almost impossible to be satisfied, for it was stated that this Prometheus repelled all advances. Persecuted by the faculty, censured by the ecclesiastical tribunal, maltreated by the police, who would not suffer anything in the shape of gold-making, he had, in his savage misanthropy, renounced all further thoughts of alleviating the pains of humanity at the cost of his repose and safety. Here was a terrible state of perplexity for our asthmatical abbe, who, for all that, did not lose courage, but set to work with all his might to discover the great physician.

But where, or how, was he to discover a sorcerer in Paris? To whom could he decently address himself? To what professional class? There are so many people in the world ready to ridicule even the most respectable things. Every time that Voisenon elbowed at the Tuileries, or in the Palais Royal, an individual in a seedy cassock, he fancied that he had discovered his man. Forthwith he would enter into conversation with him, his heart fluttering with hope, until the moment came which would convince him that he had been deceived. Though for the moment cast into despair, he did not lose hope, but would the next day recommence his voyages of discovery in search of potable gold. One morning he had a sudden illumination:--"Since the archbishop," thought he, "has censured the conduct of the abbe I have been so long in search of, the archbishop must know where he lodges." Just as if sorcerers had lodgings! That very day he repaired to the archbishop's court. If the reader wonders why our abbe did not give the clerks whom he interrogated the name of his mysterious priest, the answer is easy: it is simply because he did not know his name; magicians seldom make themselves known but by their works. This name, however, to his great and inexpressible joy, he was soon to learn. After some researches made in the register of the episcopal court, the clerk informed him that this abbe (a deplorable subject by all accounts) was called Boiviel, and, at the period when the acts of censure were passed upon him, lodged in the Rue de Versailles, Faubourg Saint Marceau. Voisenon was there almost as soon as the words were out of the clerk's mouth.

Voisenon knocked at every kennel of this deplorable street; not even a bark replied to the name of the Abbe Boiviel. At length, at a seventh floor above the mud, an old woman, who resided in a loft, to which access was obtained by means of a rope-ladder, informed him that the Abbe Boiviel had quitted the apartment about six months before, with the avowed intention of going to lodge at Menilmontant; she added, that this delay gave fair grounds for supposing that he must necessarily have changed his quarters at least five or six times in the course of these six months. Disappointed, but not discouraged, Voisenon descended from the dizzy height, reflecting upon the sad distress to which a man might be reduced, although possessing the secret of potable gold.

An almost incredible chance had so willed it, that the Abbe Boiviel had changed his abode but three times since his descent from the garret of the Rue de Versailles. From Menilmontant he had removed to Passy, and from Passy to La Chapelle, where he now resided.

At length the two abbes met; but to what delicate manoeuvres the seigneur of Voisenon was obliged to have recourse in accosting his rugged _comfrere_, who was at that moment engaged in eating his breakfast off a chair. He had sense enough to put off as long as possible the true subject of his visit; besides, what cared he for delays? He had found him at last, he was face to face with the mysterious, infallible physician, the successor of the great Albert. Boiviel was even more savage and morose than the Abbe de Voisenon had anticipated. He spoke of offering his services to the Missionary Society in order to get appointed to preach the Gospel in Japan, although, to tell the truth, he did not believe over-much in Christianity. "And I do not believe in Japan," might have perhaps replied the Abbe de Voisenon, had he been in a joking humor: but the fact is, he was thunderstruck at the enunciation of such a project. It was too provoking, when he, had at length found the Abbe Boiviel, to hear that the Abbe Boiviel was going to immolate himself in Japan.

Inspired by circumstance, that tenth muse which is worth all the nine put together, Voisenon said to Boiviel, that he was aware of all the persecutions which the clergy of Paris had made him endure for causes which he did not desire to know; he refrained also from entering on the subject of fluid gold. Touched by the exhibition of so much constancy in misfortune, he had come, he said, to propose to the Abbe Boiviel to inhabit his chateau of Voisenon, where, in the calm and repose of a peaceful existence, and with a mind freed from the harassing cares of the world, he would have leisure to meditate and write; that this proceeding of his, though strange in appearance, was excusable, and to be judged with an indulgent eye; he, the Abbe de Voisenon, was happy, rich, powerful even. The Abbe Boiviel would be quite at home at the chateau de Voisenon; his feelings of independence would not be outraged; when he should be tired of sojourning there, he might quit the chateau, remain absent as long as it pleased him, and return when it suited his fancy. It is hardly necessary to say that the wild boar allowed itself to be muzzled; that very evening a hired carriage conducted the chemist, the sorcerer, the magician Boiviel, to the Chateau de Voisenon. "I shall have my potable gold at last," thought the triumphant Abbe, radiant with hope and exultation.

Installed at the chateau, the Abbe Boiviel conformed himself with a very good grace to the monachal existence led by its inmates. The good regimen of the house tended also to considerably soften the former asperities of his demeanor; he spoke no more of Japan, but neither did he speak of the potable gold, although Voisenon on several occasions endeavored to obtain from him an explanation on this essential point. Whenever our asthmatical abbe would lead the conversation towards subjects relating to chemistry or alchemy, Boiviel would either avoid a direct reply or else fall into a state of profound taciturnity: and yet all his debts had been paid, including the various outstanding accounts due to his numerous landlords, and his dinners at the Croix de Lorraine--that memorable tavern, where all the abbes who received fifteen sous for every mass said at St. Sulpice were accustomed to feed daily. Several cassocks had also been purchased for him, several pairs of stockings, and many shirts.

After a three months' residence at the chateau he had become fat, fresh, and rosy, such as he had never before been at any previous epoch of his life. Emboldened by the friendship he had shown to his guest, Voisenon ventured one day to say to the Abbe Boiviel, that, skeptical and atheistical as they falsely imagined him to be in the world, he possessed, nevertheless, an absolute faith in alchemy; he denied neither the philosopher's stone, nor the universal panacea, nor even the potable gold. Now did he, or did he not, believe in potable gold? This was a home-thrust Boiviel could no longer recoil; he _did_ believe in it; but according to his idea the audacious chemist committed a great sin in composing it: it was, so to speak, as though attacking the decrees of creation to change into liquid what had been ordained a metal. A sorcerer troubled with religious scruples appeared a strange spectacle to the Abbe de Voisenon and one, too, that rather embarrassed him. He did not, however, entirely renounce his conquest of the potable gold; he waited three months longer, and during these three months fresh favors were lavished on Boiviel, who habituated himself to these proceedings with praiseworthy resignation.

Treated as a friend, called also by that title, Boiviel justified the Abbe de Voisenon in saying to him one day, that he had no longer a hope in any remedy whatsoever, save the potable gold, for the cure of his asthma. Without the specific, as much above other remedies as the sun is above fire, the only course left him was to die. Boiviel was moved, his iron resolves were shaken, and his qualms of conscience ceded to the voice of friendship. He warned his friend, however, that in order to compose a little fluid gold much solid gold would be required. The first essay would cost ten thousand livres at the very least. Voisenon, who would have given twenty thousand to be cured, consented to the sacrifice, thanking heartily his future liberator, who, on the following day, commenced the great work. What sage deliberation did he bring to the task! and how slowly did the work proceed! Day followed day, month followed month, but as yet no gold, except that which the Abbe de Voisenon himself contributed in pieces of twenty-four livres each. The day at length arrived in which, the ten thousand livres being exhausted, Boiviel informed his patient that the fluid gold was in flasks, and would be ready for use in a month.

It was during this month that the alchemist Boiviel took leave of the Abbe de Voisenon, on the pretext of going to see his old father, who resided in Flanders. Before two months were out he would return to the chateau, in order to observe the beneficial effects of the liquified metal. Warmly embraced by his friend, overwhelmed with presents, solicited to return as speedily as possible, Boiviel quitted the Chateau de Voisenon, where he had lived for nearly a year, and in what manner we have seen.

After the time allowed by Boiviel for the fluid gold to be fit for use had elapsed, the Abbe de Voisenon began his course of the medicine. He emptied the first, the second, and the third flask, awaiting the result with exemplary patience; but an asthma is not to be cured in a week, especially an asthma of forty years' standing.

Boiviel had not yet returned; he had now been four months in Flanders; to these four months succeeded another four, but no Boiviel; the year revolved, the flasks diminished, but still no Boiviel.

It is scarcely necessary to say that the Abbe Boiviel never reappeared, and that he was nothing better than a charlatan and a thief. But the singular part of the matter is, that the Abbe de Voisenon found his asthma considerably relieved after a course of the fluid gold composed by Boiviel; and his sole regret at the end of his days was, not having foreseen the death, or disappearance--a matter quite as disastrous--of his alchemist, who could have furnished him with the means of compounding the elixir for himself as it might be wanted.

In order to show himself superior to the assaults of his enemy, our Abbe would often endeavor to persuade himself that he was every whit as

## active as he had formerly been; more active even than he had been in

his youth. On these occasions he would jump up from his easy-chair, where he had been sitting groaning under an attack of the asthma; he would cast his pillows on one side, his night-cap on the other, would pitch his slippers to the other end of the room, and call loudly for his domestics. In one of these deceitful triumphs of his will over his feeble constitution, he rang one cold winter's morning for his _valet de chambre_.

"My thick cloth trousers!" cried he, "my thick cloth trousers!"

"Why, Monsieur l'Abbe," timidly objected his faithful servitor, "what can you be thinking of? you were very bad yesterday evening."

"That's very probable; I have nothing to do with what I was yesterday evening. My thick cloth trousers, I tell you--now, my furred waistcoat! Come, look sharp!"

"But, Monsieur l'Abbe, why quit your warm room, your snug arm-chair? You are so pale."

"Pale, am I! that's better than ever, for I have been as yellow as a quince all my life! Good, I have my trousers and waistcoat; fetch me my redingote!"

"Your redingote! that you only put on when you are going out?"

"And it is precisely because I am going out that I ask for it. You argue to-day like a true stage valet. Why should I not put on my redingote? Are you afraid of it becoming shabby? Do you wish to steal it from me while it is new?"

"I am afraid that you will increase your cough if you don't keep the house to-day. It is very cold this morning."

"Very cold, is it, eh? so much the better. I like cold weather."

"It snows even very much, Monsieur l'Abbe."

"In that case, my large Polish boots."

"Your large Polish boots! And for what purpose?"

"Not to write a poem in, probably; for if Boileau very sensibly remarked, that in order to write a good poem time and taste were necessary, he did not add that boots were indispensable. Once for all, I want my Polish boots to go out shooting in. Is not that plain enough, Monsieur Mascarille?"

"Cough shooting, Monsieur l'Abbe?"

"_Maraud!_ wolf-shooting--in the wood. Come, quick, my boots, and no chattering."

"Here are your boots, Monsieur l'Abbe. Truly you have no thought for your health."

"Have you a design upon my boots, also? Be so good, most discursive valet, as to fetch me my deer-skin gloves, my hat, and gun."

The Abbe de Voisenon was soon equipped with the aid of his valet, who, during the operation of dressing, never ceased repeating to him:

"It is fearfully cold this morning. Dogs have been found frozen to death in their kennels, fish dead in the fish-ponds, cattle dead in the stables, birds dead on the trees, and even wolves dead in the forest."

"My good friend," replied the Abbe de Voisenon, "you have said too much; your story of the wolves prevents me believing the rest: upon this I start. Now listen to me. On my return from shooting I expect to find my poultices ready, my asses-milk properly warmed, and my _tisanes_ mixed; give directions about all this in the kitchen."

"Yes, Monsieur l'Abbe. He'll never return, that's certain," murmured the valet, as he packed up his master in his great-coat, and drew his fur cap well down over his ears.

Followed by three of his dogs, our abbe started on his shooting excursion. At the very first step he took on leaving the court-yard, he fell; but he was up in an instant, and brushed speedily along. It must have been a strange spectacle to see this old man, as black as a mute at a funeral, with his black gloves, black boots, black coat, all black in short, tripping gayly along over the snow with three dogs at his heels, sometimes whistling and shouting aloud, sometimes cracking his pocket-whip, and occasionally pointing his fowling-piece in the direction of a flight of crows.

He had passed through the village of Voisenon, and had just gained the open country, when he was stopped at the entrance of a lane of small cottages by a young girl, who, the instant she perceived him, cried out,

"Ah, monseigneur" (for many people styled him monseigneur), "it is surely Providence that has sent you to us!"

"What is the matter?" inquired the abbe.

"Our grandfather is dying, and he is unwilling to die without confession."

"But I have nothing to do with that, my child; that is the priest's business."

"But are you not a priest, monseigneur?"

"Almost," replied our abbe, rather taken aback by this home-thrust, and in a very bad humor besides at the interruption, "almost; but address yourself in preference to the prior of the convent. Run to the chateau, ring at the convent-gate; ring loudly, and reserve me for a better occasion."

"Monseigneur," repeated the girl, "our grandfather has not time to wait; he is dying--you must come."

"I tell you," replied the abbe, confused within himself at his refusal, "I cannot go. I am, as you see, out shooting: the thing is utterly impossible."

With these words he sought to pursue his way; but the young girl, who could not comprehend the bad arguments made use of by the abbe, clung obstinately to his coat skirts, and compelled him to turn round. Aroused by the noise of this altercation, a few of the male population appeared on the thresholds of their doors, others at their windows; and as a village resembles a bundle of dry hay, which a spark will set in a blaze, the wives joined their husbands, the children their mothers, and soon the entire population flocked into the street to see what was the matter.

The Abbe du Jard, seigneur of Voisenon, king of the country, felt deeply humiliated amid the crowd which surrounded him, and which had already begun to murmur at this refusal, as irreligious as it was inhuman.

But our poor abbe was not inhuman. The fact was, he had completely forgotten the formula used on such occasions; and if the truth must be told, as he was careless and indifferent in religious matters, rather than hypocritical, his conscience reproached him for going to absolve or condemn a fellow-creature when he inwardly felt how utterly unworthy he was himself of judging others at the tribunal of the confessional.

Necessity, however, prevailed over his just scruples; which scruples, however, be it said, could not be made use of as excuses to his vassals: so, with downcast eyes and his reversed fowling-piece under his arm, he permitted himself to be led to the cottage where lay the old man, who was unwilling to render his last sigh without having made the official avowal of his sins.

The villagers knelt in a circle before the door, whilst the abbe seated himself by the side of the dying man, in order the better to receive his confession.

Since the unlucky moment in which the Abbe de Voisenon had been balked of his morning's sport, he had lost--for he had at times his intervals of superstitious terror--the proud determination he had formed of not believing himself ill on that day. But then, what signs of evil augury had greeted him! He had tripped and fallen on leaving home; he had seen flocks of crows; a weeping girl had dragged him to the bedside of a terrified sinner--even now they were repeating the prayers for the dying around him. The Abbe de Voisenon was overcome; his former temerity oozed palpably away, he felt sick at heart, his ears tingled, his asthma groaned within his chest.

"I am ill," thought he. "I was in the wrong to come out; why did I not take my old servant's advice, and remain at home?"

Finally he lent an ear to the old man's confession.

"You were born the same day as myself!" exclaimed the abbe, at the patient's first confidential communication; "you were born the same day as myself!"

The old man continued, and here a new terror arose for our abbe.

"You have never heard mass to the end! And I," thought he, "have never heard even the beginning for these last thirty years!"

The penitent continued:--

"I have committed, monseigneur, the great sin that you know."

"The great sin that I know! I know so many," thought the abbe. "What sin, my friend?"

"Yea, the great sin--although married--"

"Ah! I understand!" Then, _sotto voce_, "My great sin, although a priest."

A deplorable fatality, if it was a fatality, had so willed it that the vassal should have fallen into the same snares as had his lord, who was now called to judge him at his last hour.

When the confession was ended, the Abbe de Voisenon consulted his own heart with inward terror, and after some hesitation he remitted his penitent's sins, inwardly avowing to himself that the dying man ought, at least, out of gratitude, to render him the same service.

The ceremony over, the abbe rose to depart: but his limbs failed him, and they were actually obliged to carry him home, where he arrived in a state of prostration that seriously alarmed his household. During the remainder of that day he spoke to no one; wrapped up in the silence of his own melancholy thoughts, he opened his lips only to cough. The night was bad; icy shiverings passed over his frame: the image of this man, of the same age, and burdened with the same sins as he himself had committed, would not leave his memory. By daylight his trouble of mind and body was at its height; he desired his valet to summon his physician and the prior of the convent. "And immediately," added he, "immediately."

Comprehending better this time the wishes of his master, the domestic hastened to arouse the prior, whose convent almost adjoined the chateau, and the physician, who had apartments in the chateau itself. This physician was a young man, chosen by the celebrated Tronchin from among his cleverest pupils at the express desire of the Abbe de Voisenon.

Seriously alarmed at the danger of the abbe, both prior and physician hastened to obey the summons. M. de Voisenon was so ill last night. Should they arrive in time? So equal and so prompt was their zeal that both reached the abbe's bedroom door together. But when they opened it, what was their astonishment to find that the bird had flown; our abbe had got over his little fright, and had gone out shooting again.

The end of that fatal eighteenth century was now approaching; undermined by years and debauchery, it was now like a ruined spend-thrift moving away from the calendar of the world in rags; it was hideously old, but its years inspired not respect. Old king, old ministers, old generals--if indeed there were generals,--old courtiers, old mistresses, old poets, old musicians, old opera dancers, broken down with _ennui_, pleasure, and idleness--toothless, faded, rouged, and wrinkled--were descending slowly to the tomb. Louis XV. formed one of the funeral procession; he was taken to St. Denis between two lines of _cabarets_ filled with drunken revellers, madly rejoicing at being rid of this plague, which another plague had carried off to the grave. Crebillon was dead; the son of the great Racine, honored by the famous title of Member of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres, was taken off by a malignant fever, and obtained from the grateful publicity of the day the following necrological eulogium, as brief as it was eloquent: "M. Racine, last of the name, died yesterday of a malignant fever; as a man of letters he was long dead, having become stupefied by wine and devotion." Twelve days afterwards Marivaux followed Racine to the grave. The Abbe Prevost died of a tenth attack of apoplexy in the forest of Chantilly. In the following spring the celebrated Madame de Pompadour descended, at the age of forty-four, into the grave, after having exhaled a _bon mot_ in guise of confession. Desirous, as it would appear, of leaving this world like the rest of his worthy _comperes_, the composer Rameau cried furiously to his confessor, whose lugubrious note while intoning the service at his bedside offended the delicacy of his ear, 'What the devil are you muttering there, Monsieur le Cure? you are horribly out of tune!' And thereupon Master Rameau expired of a putrid fever. And what think you, worthy reader, occupied the public the day following the death of the most celebrated musician in Europe, the king of the French school? Why, nothing less than this wonderful piece of news: "Mademoiselle Mire, of the Opera, more celebrated as a courtesan than as a _danseuse_, has interred her lover; on his tomb are engraven these words:

MI RE LA MI LA."

A touching funeral oration, truly, for poor Rameau! Panard, the father of the French vaudeville, died some days after Rameau; and the Parisian public, with its national tenderness of heart, merely remarked, that "the words could not be separated from the accompaniment."

You see, reader, how the ranks were thinning, how all these old candles were expiring in their sockets, how the ball was approaching its end.

"Piron died yesterday," writes a journalist; and he adds, "They say he received the cure of St. Roche very badly." What an admirable piece of buffoonery! these cures going in turn to shrive the writers of the eighteenth century, and having flung at their heads epigrams composed for the occasion, perhaps, ten years before.

Louis XV. died soon after Piron. A few hours before his death he said to Cardinal de la Roche-Aymon: "Although the king is answerable to God alone for his conduct, you can say that he is sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and that from henceforth he desires to live but for the support of faith and religion, and for the happiness of his people!"

Like Rameau, Piron, Helvetius, and Pompadour, this good little king Louis XV. must have his _bon mot_; he was sorry for having caused any scandal to his subjects, and at his last moment of existence would live from henceforth for the sole happiness of his people! "Can any thing be finer than this?"

Finally came the Abbe de Voisenon's turn. Witty to his last hour, when they brought home the leaden coffin, the exact form and dimensions of which he had himself arranged and ordered beforehand, he said to one of his domestics,--

"There is a great-coat, any how, that you will not be tempted to steal from me."

He died on the 22d of November, 1775, aged sixty-eight.

FOOTNOTES:

[Q] This was the celebrated society called the _Academie de ces Messieurs_: it numbered among its members all the more celebrated wits of the day.

IRELAND IN THE LAST AGE.

Recollections of Curran.

From the London Times

If the work of Mr. Charles Phillips were a description of the Roman bar in the time of Hadrian, it would scarcely be more completely than at present the picture of a time and system entirely passed away; yet he professes to give us--and performs his promise--a somewhat gossipping and very amusing description of the Irish bar, and the great men belonging to it, very little more than half a century since. But we travel and change quickly in these days of steam and railroads; even Time himself appears now to have attached his travelling carriage to a locomotive, and in the space of one man's life performs a journey that in staid and ancient days would have occupied the years of many generations, and, as if in illustration of the fleeting nature of men and things and systems at this time, here we find a contemporary (at this moment hardly past the prime of life) giving us portraits, and relating anecdotes of men with whom he, in his youth, lived in intimate and professional relations, but who seem now as absolutely to belong to a bygone order of things, as if they had wrangled before the Dikasts of Athens, or pleaded before the Praetor at Rome. Mr. Phillips seems to feel this, and, as the gay days of his sanguine youth flit by his memory, the retrospect brings, as it will ever bring, melancholy, and even sadness, with it. Yielding himself up to the dominion of feeling, in place of keeping his reason predominant, he mourns over the past, as if, in comparison with the present, it were greatly more worthy. Forgetting that there is a change also in himself; that the capacity for enjoyment is largely diminished; that hope has been fulfilled, or is for ever frustrate; he tests the present by his own emotions, instead of weighing with philosophic _indifference_ the relative merits of the system that he describes, and of that in which he lives. We are told--

"'Tis distance lends enchantment to the view;"

but, when age comes upon us, we must turn and look back, if we desire to enjoy this pleasing hallucination.

But in what is the present of Ireland so different from the past, in which our fathers lived? And what do these repinings mean? What is the charm that has for ever faded? The answer to this question, if complete, would occupy a volume, for the composition of which that of Mr. Phillips might well serve in the character of _une piece historique_, abounding, as it does, in apt and instructive illustration, and giving, by its aggregation of anecdotes and descriptions, a somewhat confused but still interesting and lively picture of a very curious and stirring period. There lies, indeed, at the bottom of this inquiry a question with which the practical statesman has now little reason to trouble himself, but which, nevertheless, to the speculative philosopher, cannot fail to be a subject of never-failing interest.

The great physical discoveries of modern times, by which the powers of nature are made to act in subservience to the use and comfort of mankind, steadily tend to one great political result, viz., the permanently uniting and knitting together of much larger numbers of men into one and the same community, and subjecting them to one and the same Government, and that Government one of law and not of force, than was ever known or possible during the early days of man's history. This result, as regards the peace of the world and all the material comforts of life, is highly favorable. Whether the same can be said, of the mental vigor and moral excellence of the human race is a question upon which men may speculate, but which time alone can satisfactorily answer.

The small, contentious, and active communities of Greece; the little, ill-governed, yet vigorous Republics of modern Italy, stand out in the history of mankind bright and illustrious beyond all hope of comparison; and, from the wondrous intellects that appeared among them, they have proved to all succeeding times a never-failing subject of admiration, envy, and despair. Just in proportion to our own advancement in art, literature, and science, is the intensity of our astonishment, of our envy, and of our despondency. We endeavor to compete with, but can never equal them; we imitate, but, like all imitators, we are condemned to mediocrity; it is only when we attempt to explore some new and untrod region of art or science that we can pretend to the dignity even of comparison. And these regions are rare indeed.

But, if we compare our own social condition with that of the Greeks or the Italians--if we look into their houses, their cities, and their fields,--if we acquire an accurate and vivid conception of the insecurity of life, of property, and of peace among them,--and if we measure the happiness of life by the comforts of every day existence, then, indeed, the superiority belongs to ourselves; and we may be led to ask, whether the advantages of both conditions of political and social existence may not be united; and to that end seek to learn what it was that brought out into such vigorous relief the wonderful mental activity of the two periods, which form such peculiar and hitherto unequalled epocha in the history of mankind. We shall find, if we pursue this inquiry into other times and among other people, that there was one circumstance, among many others indeed, of peculiar weight and importance, which then exercised and has never failed to exercise, wheresoever it has existed, a vast influence upon the mental and moral character of the people--we mean a feeling of intense _nationality_. This feeling is not all that is required; without it no great originality or vigor in a people is probable, and where it has been strongly manifest, it has generally led to great deeds, and much mental

## activity. The character of this manifestation will, indeed, greatly

depend upon the natural character of the people--upon the peculiar state of their civilization, and upon their political condition. If these be all favorable, the spirit of nationality is divine, and manifest in great and ennobling deeds and thoughts; but, if adverse, then the spirit will be destructive, and vice will be quickened into fatal activity.

In Ireland, at the end of the eighteenth century, a remarkable series of events cherished, if it did not indeed produce, this sentiment of a separate nationality and independence. Conquerors and conquered, in spite of social and religious distinctions, had long since coalesced into one people; and the successful revolt of our American colonies, induced the people of Ireland to demand for themselves freedom and independence also. With arms in their hands the Volunteers wrung from England an independent Parliament in 1782; and in the eighteen years which followed, all that is really great in the history of Ireland, is comprised. The Volunteers, indeed, obtained independence, but that was all. The constitution of the Irish was, as before, narrow and mischievous, oppressive and corrupt; but it was Irish, and independent of the Parliament of England. And the struggles of an independent people, endeavoring, by their own efforts, to reform their own institutions, led to the rising of that brilliant galaxy of statesmen, orators, wits, and lawyers, to which Irishmen of the present day, almost without exception, refer with grief and despondency, not unmixed with indignation, when wishing to make the world appreciate the evils their country has suffered in consequence of its union with England. But, unhappily, the great spirit of freedom was awakened in evil times. Great, vigorous, and almost glorious was this wonderful manifestation of its power; but eventually the horrible corruption and vice of the period bore all before it, and extinguished every chance of benefit from the acquisition of independence. Great men appeared, but they were powerless. Of the remarkable period in which they lived, however, every memorial is of interest. With the society of which they formed a part, so different from our own--with the character and manners of the men themselves, their history, their good sayings and wild deeds, every student of history wishes to become acquainted, and seizes with avidity upon every piece of evidence from which authentic information respecting them may be gathered--and, as a portion of this evidence, the work of Mr. Phillips deserves consideration.

Among the most remarkable of the many distinguished characters of this stirring period was John Philpot Curran,--among Irish advocates, as was Erskine among those of England, _facile princeps_. With him, when on the bench as Master of the Rolls in Ireland, Mr. Phillips, himself then a junior at the Irish bar, became acquainted. Acquaintance became intimacy, and intimacy led to friendship, which lasted without interruption to the day of Curran's death. Admiration and affection induced Mr. Phillips to gather together memorials of his deceased friend, round whose portrait he has grouped sketches of many of his celebrated cotemporaries. He says in his preface--

"My object has been, touching as lightly as possible on the politics of the time, to give merely personal sketches of the characters as they appeared upon the scene to me. Many of them were my acquaintances--some of them my intimates; and the aim throughout has been a verisimilitude in the portraiture;--in short, to make the reader as familiar with the originals as I was myself."

And a more curious collection of likenesses was never crowded into one canvas. They all, indeed, have a strong family resemblance, but certainly they are like nothing else in nature; and to us, living in grave, and possibly dull and prosaic England--and in this our matter of fact and decorous age--the doings of the society which they have made illustrious, appear more like a mad _saturnalia_ than the sober and commonplace procedure of rational men. The whole people--every class, profession, and degree--seemed to consider life but a species of delirious dance, and a wild and frantic excitement the one sole pleasure. Repose, thoughtfulness, and calm, they must have considered a premature death. Every emotion was sought for in its extreme, and a rapid variation from merriment to misery, from impassioned love to violent hate, was the ordinary (if in such an existence any thing could be deemed ordinary)--the common and ordinary condition of life. Laughter, that was ever on the brink of tears--a wild joy, that might in an instant be followed by hopeless despondency--alternations from sanguine and eager hope to blank and apparently crushing despair,--such was Irish life, in which every one appeared to be acting a part, and striving to appear original by means of a strained and laborious affectation. Steady, continued, and rational industry, was either unknown or despised; economy was looked upon as meanness--thrift was called avarice--and the paying a just debt, except upon compulsion, was deemed conduct wholly unworthy of a gentleman. Take the account Mr. Phillips himself gives. He speaks of the Irish squire; but the Irish squire was the raw material out of which so-called Irish gentlemen were made. "The Irish squire of half a century ago _scorned_ not to be in debt; it would be beneath his dignity to live within his income; and next to not incurring a debt, the greatest degradation would have been voluntarily to _pay one_." And yet was there great pretension to _honor_, but a man of honor of those days would in our time be considered a ruffian certainly, and probably a blackleg or a swindler. "It was a favorite boast of his (the first Lord Norbury) that he began life with fifty pounds, and a pair of hair-trigger pistols." "They served his purpose well.... The luck of the hair-triggers triumphed, and Toler not only became Chief Justice, but the founder of two peerages, and the testator of an enormous fortune. After his promotion, the code of honor became, as it were, engrafted on that of the Common Pleas; the noble chief not unfrequently announcing that he considered himself a judge only while he wore his robes." The sort of law dispensed by this fire-eating judge might be easily conceived even without the aid of such an anecdote as the following: "A nonsuit was never heard of in his time. Ill-natured people said it was to draw suitors to his court." Toler's reason for it was that he was too _constitutional_ to interfere with a jury, Be that as it may, a nonsuit was a nonentity, 'I hope, my Lord,' said counsel in a case actually commanding one, 'your Lordship will, for once, have the courage to nonsuit? In a moment the hair-triggers were uppermost. 'Courage! I tell you what, Mr. Wallace, there are two sorts of courage--courage to shoot, and courage to nonshoot--and I have both; but nonshoot now I certainly will not; and argument is only a waste of time.' "I remember well," says Mr. Phillips, when speaking of another judge, Mr. Justice Fletcher, "at the Sligo summer assizes for 1812, being counsel in the case of 'The King _v._ Fenton,' for the murder of Major Hillas in a duel, when old Judge Fletcher thus capped his summing up to the jury: 'Gentlemen, it's my business to lay down the law to you, and I will. The law says, the killing a man in a duel is murder, and I am bound to tell you it is murder; therefore, in the discharge of my duty, I tell you so; but I tell you at the same time, a _fairer duel_ than this I never heard of in the whole _coorse_ of my life.' It is scarcely necessary to add that there was an immediate acquittal." By way of giving some idea of the character of society then, the following enumeration is supplied by the memory of Mr. Phillips:--

"Lord Clare, afterwards Lord Chancellor, fought Curran, afterwards Master of the Rolls. So much for equity; but common law also sustained its reputation. Clonmel, afterwards Chief Justice, fought two Lords and two Commoners,--to show his impartiality, no doubt. Medge, afterwards Baron, fought his own brother-in-law, and two others. Toler, afterwards Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, fought three persons, one of whom was Fitzgerald, even in Ireland the 'fire-eater,' _par excellence_. Patterson, also afterwards Chief Justice of the same court, fought three country gentlemen, one of them with guns, another with swords, and wounded them all! Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer, fought Mr. Grattan. The Provost of Dublin University, a Privy Councillor, fought Mr. Doyle, a Master in Chancery, and several others. His brother, collector of Customs, fought Lord Mountmorris. Harry Deane Grady, counsel to the Revenue, fought several duels; and 'all hits,' adds Barrington, with unction. Curran fought four persons, one of whom was Egan, Chairman of Kilmainham; afterwards his friend, with Lord Buckinghamshire. A duel in these days was often a prelude to intimacy."

In spite, nevertheless, of this rude, nay, almost wild condition of society,--in spite of a most fantastic affectation attending nearly every act and thought and word,--yet were Curran and his cotemporaries men of great and vigorous ability. Grattan, Curran, and Flood, deserve indeed to take rank among the foremost class of their own age,--among the men of genius of every age and country. If we speak of them as orators, and wish to judge of their excellence with relation to the great orators of our own country, we must bear in mind the character of the society in which they lived, and of the assemblies they addressed. It would be unjust to try them by the rules of our fastidious taste and undemonstrative manners. They addressed Irishmen, and Irishmen just when most excited, and indulging in all the wild sallies of a dearly-prized and lately acquired independence. What to us would appear offensive rant and disgusting affectation, would, in the Irish House of Commons, have been but the usual manifestation of strong feeling, and was absolutely required, if the speaker desired to move as well as convince his auditory.

If, however, we seek to know what was the virtue of these men, more especially that of Curran, we must probe to the bottom the corruptions and baseness of that society, which deserves to be branded as among the most base and the most corrupt that history has hitherto described. The temptations which England employed, the horrible corruption and profligacy she fostered, must be fully known, if we desire to do justice to the men who came out undefiled from that filthy ordeal.

THE LOST LETTER.

From Chambers' Papers for the People.